14 DAY TRIAL // All Facebook apps are currently experiencing major issues across the world, with users reporting problems when trying to load photos and videos.
We can confirm similar errors with WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger.
Not all photos seem to be impacted, as on Instagram some appear to load correctly. On WhatsApp, on the other hand, downloading the images that you receive from contacts isn’t possible, and it fails with the following error (as shown in the attached picture):
“Couldn’t download image. Try again. If the problem keeps happening, try turning off Wi-Fi or VPN, or connecting to a different Wi-Fi network.”
Needless to say, none of the recommended workarounds make a difference.
According to user reports, the problems started at approximately 8 AM ET. They occur mostly in Europe, but some parts of the United States are affected as well.
Fix on its way
Facebook says it’s already working on resolving these problems, albeit no specifics have been provided on what exactly is happening and who is affected.
“We’re aware that some people are having trouble uploading or sending images, videos and other files on our apps. We're sorry for the trouble and are working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible,” Facebook says.
Outages like today’s occur occasionally on Facebook, but they are typically resolved in a matter of minutes. Whatever the problem is right now, it appears that it’s taking substantially more time for the social network company, as users have been unable to download images and videos for at least two hours at the time of publishing this article.
We have reached out to Facebook for more details on the issues that caused the downtime, and we’ll update the article if an answer is offered.
Meanwhile, your only option is to wait for Facebook to release a fix regardless of the app you’re using.