Update [5 October, 12:34AM]: Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram have posted their official statements on Twitter, informing users that they are aware of the situation and that an investigation into the matter is underway.

Original story below [5 October, 12:09AM]:

If you’re been having difficulties trying to access your Facebook page, sending a message via WhatsApp, or post a picture on Instagram, you’re not the only one. At the time of writing, both the social network and its owned apps seem to be offline and unavailable.

The issue seems to have started with Facebook’s social messaging app, WhatsApp, and more specifically, the desktop version of the app. Users were reportedly unable to launch the app and were greeted with a “ffmpeg.dll not found” error, along with a suggestion to try reinstalling the desktop app once again. Seeing how we were affected, we tried to reinstall the app and it worked, if only for a brief moment. Almost immediately after we did so, connection to the platform went down and when we tried to relaunch it, we were greeted with the message that our system was not connected to the internet. Despite the fact that we were.

At the time of this publication, Facebook has not released an official statement or explanation as to why this is happening.

This is a developing story…