It is normal for websites and apps to suffer outages, though one on a global scale is rare.

Facebook has experienced similar widespread outages with its suite of apps this year in March and July.

WhatsApp was also down for over 35,000 users, while Messenger was down for nearly 9,800 users.

Downdetector - which only tracks outages by collating status reports from a series of sources, showed there were more than 50,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Facebook and Instagram.

As per The Verge, users could load games they already had installed and the browser worked, but social features or installing new games did not. The problem also appears to be affecting Facebook's virtual reality arm, Oculus.Though the error message on the webpage of Facebook Inc suggested a problem with Domain Name System (DNS). The company did not specify the reason for the global outage.

We are working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologise for any inconvenience,' a Facebook spokesperson said. 'We are aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products.

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