Facebook and Instagram down for second time this week as thousands report issues

Facebook and Instagram are down tonight for thousands of users for the second time this week.

On Monday, social media platforms Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram stopped working for millions of users around the world.

The outage lasted for around seven hours, with users not being able to access the apps, post content or keep in touch with other people.

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Users took to Down Detector to report problems with Instagram tonight just before 7.30pm and Facebook just after 8pm.

More than 15,800 people reported issues with not being able to access the Instagram app or website tonight.

Users were met with error 500 messages.

Others were told: “www.instagram.com is currently unable to handle this request.”

A company spokesperson for Facebook, which owns the app, told The Independent: “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and we apologize for any inconvenience.”

It is currently not known when the service will be back up and running.

Photo-sharing service Instagram is owned by Facebook, who acquired the company in a $1bn (£734m) deal in 2012.

Facebook apologised over the outage on Monday, blaming it on a ‘faulty configuration change’.

‘To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we’re sorry,’ Facebook said in the statement.

‘We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us.’