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Facebook Messenger went down across the globe earlier today, leaving countless IMs as "read" with no response, but somehow the world kept turning.
Facebook messenger is down. Well I was getting tired of my messages being left on read anyway.
— Heel Turn Haden (@_TheSonOfMars_) December 5, 2017
Frazzled users started complaining of the outage at around 6 a.m. Eastern Time, according to popular status reporting site Outage Report. The issues appeared to affect the East Coast of the US, Europe, and southeast Asia, peaking at about 8 a.m.
Image: outage report/screenshot
Facebook acknowledged the issue on its developers site after about an hour at 7:06 a.m. Eastern Time, posting a message stating that the outage was being investigated by a team working to find a solution to the problem. The social network hasn't yet updated the page, so the investigation is ongoing.
Messenger users took to Twitter to air their online grievances about the outage, as has become standard protocol when a social media platform goes on the fritz.
facebook messenger is down. facebook refugees be trying to figure out twitter DM. #MessengerDown pic.twitter.com/27bMQqHAlQ
— His Nerdiness (@AfrikanNerd) December 5, 2017
Some even took the opportunity to hype up other messaging platforms, unsurprisingly.
@facebook #messenger seems to be down. You can use @telegram for free with a 100% uptime :D pic.twitter.com/VQLsoWFYlN
— Mathieu Tortuyaux (@TortueMat) December 5, 2017
Thankfully, the service appears to have been restored for most users. The cause of the outage wasn't immediately clear; we've contacted Facebook for comment and will update this story when we get a response.
UPDATE: Dec. 5, 2017, 11:05 a.m. EST A Messenger spokesperson confirmed to us via email that regular service has been restored. They did not specify what caused the outage.