"Facebook" attributes the malfunction to "changes in the settings" of the servers. The White House is commenting

Facebook announced on Monday night that the huge outage that affected the world's number one social networking site and its Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger applications, and lasted about seven hours, during which a large part of the world's users were unable to communicate through these platforms, due to a "wrong change in the settings" of the servers.

"People and businesses around the world are counting on us to stay in touch with each other," the social media giant said in a statement, adding that "we extend our apologies to those who have been affected" by the potentially numbering outage, according to security experts. Cyber, billions of people.

For her part, US Department of Justice spokeswoman Nicole Navas told "Sky News Arabia": "We will not comment on any cyber-piracy hypothesis yet and we are monitoring the situation."

Facebook's share price fell after users' ability to access their accounts was disrupted as a result of the sudden malfunction that included both "Instagram" and "WhatsApp". Facebook lost about $20 billion and its market value decreased to $967 billion.

For her part, the White House spokeswoman said: "Social networking sites have proven that working according to their own limitations has not worked."

"What was revealed about Facebook yesterday is disturbing, and we will continue to support efforts to fundamentally fix the current issues," she added.

In an interview with the "60 Minutes" TV show, Frances Hogan, the former Facebook production manager, revealed that she was behind the leaking of information related to Facebook's policies to the Wall Street Journal.

She added that the social media giant applies different rules to high-profile accounts, noting that the platform played a role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

She also said that Facebook puts profits at the forefront of its interests, at the expense of hate speech.

The statements came with the "big holiday", as Facebook and its related applications such as Instagram and WhatsApp were suspended.

According to Down Detector, the downtime of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp began at 16:44 GMT on Monday, affecting users globally.

Down Detector also reported that users from different countries of the world are experiencing difficulties accessing Twitter, Google, Amazon and Tik Tok, in addition to reports of mobile phone service malfunctions in the United States.