Facebook, Instagram and Messenger stop working amid Thanksgiving outage

NEW YORK: Social media website Facebook on Thursday stopped working, amid a major Thanksgiving outage. Users complained that the social network broke at the same time as Instagram, which is owned by the same company. However, WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, continued to function normally, according to a report by the Independent.

"We're aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing Facebook's family of apps. We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible," a Facebook company spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Some users reportedly said that they were able to see parts of each app, while others said that the services appeared to be working as normal. 

The outage recalls the major problems over summer, during which the entire Facebook-owned products went offline for almost a day.

A lot of people complained about the issue, according to tracking website Down Detector. The issues were seen across the world, but not everyone appeared to be affected.

Many Facebook users said that they were able to get on the site as normal. But important parts of functionality including sharing new posts, for instance, were broken.

Facebook Messenger, which is part of the Facebook platform but exists as a separate app, was also affected by the problems.