Facebook and Instagram are finally recovering from one of the worst outages in their history

Facebook

Facebook and Instagram are recovering from huge outages on Wednesday.
Instagram tweeted: "Anddddd… we’re back." Reports of disruption on Facebook declined significantly.
Facebook said the problems were not the result of a DDoS attack, while NBC Bay Area reported that the issue was caused by a database "overload."

Facebook and Instagram are getting back on their feet.

The two social networks, which together have billions of users, were down for hours on Wednesday in one of the worst outages in Facebook’s 15-year history. The BBC said it was the worst.

There were signs of life early on Thursday morning, Eastern Time. Instagram tweeted, "Anddddd… we’re back," while reports of disruption on Facebook declined significantly.

Below is a graph from DownDetector, a website where people can report outages of popular internet services, as of 4 a.m. ET.

DownDetector

Facebook has not commented on the reason for the collapse of its services, but has made clear it was not the result of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) cyber attack, as had been speculated.

"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," the company said on Wednesday.

Estimates suggest that the problems started at around 12 p.m. ET on Wednesday. NBC Bay Area reported that the issue was caused by a database "overload." A source told the broadcaster: "We are racing to spin up new machines as others go down. Mostly resolved…but it takes time."

Business Insider has contacted Facebook for its latest update on the outage.

This story is developing.

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