During Facebook And Instagram Outage, Authorities In Australia Urged People Not To Call Triple-Zero
As previously reported by The Inquisitr, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are experiencing a massive unexplained downtime. In the current age of technology, these platforms — particularly Facebook and Instagram — are considered essential social media requirements by many people. And, as the downtime increased, so did the panic surrounding the outage. As a result of this, there have been reports of people in Australia dialing triple-zero in order to both report the outage and to request information about it.
Because of this influx of phone calls, some Australian authorities have had to issue statements urging people not to use emergency services such as triple-zero for the Facebook and Instagram outage.
According to News.com.au, authorities in both Queensland and South Australia are urging people distraught about the social media outages to stop calling their emergency services number and reporting the incident or using the number to request information about the downtime.
SA SES posted about the Facebook outage via their official Twitter account. In the message, they requested people to stop calling triple-zero regarding the outage.
We know Facebook & Instagram are down. Please don't call triple zero to let us know. https://t.co/WBXmCsn11g
— SASES (@SA_SES) March 13, 2019
Natalie Barr, a news reporter for the Australian early morning news program Sunrise, also relayed a message from Queensland authorities urging people to stop using emergency services to report the outage.
Currently, people are starting to report via Twitter more functionality regarding Facebook and it appears that Facebook and Instagram might finally be on the way to full functionality once more. However, it appears that the issues with the social media platforms have not yet been fully resolved and it is important that people remain calm while they wait for the platforms to return to normal usability.
As yet, Facebook has not released further details via their Twitter account regarding the outage, so it is expected they are still working on a solution for the downtime. It is also unclear just how much longer these platforms may continue to display functionality issues.
Facebook’s most recent post was more than eight hours ago when they reported that they were working on the known issue.
“We’re focused on working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, but can confirm that the issue is not related to a DDoS attack,” Facebook said via their official Twitter account.
If people are still experiencing difficulties accessing Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp, it is advised that they turn to the official Twitter accounts for these platforms rather than contacting emergency services via triple-zero.
