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Bongani Ndlovu, Online Reporter

Zimbabwe and the rest of the world are currently experiencing a social media blackout after the servers of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp crashed.

The apps, which are all owned by Facebook, and run-on shared infrastructure, stopped working shortly before 6PM.

Facebook has nearly three billion accounts, Instagram with more than 1.3 billion and WhatsApp has over two billion active accounts.

“We’re aware that some people are experiencing issues with WhatsApp at the moment. We’re working to get things back to normal and will send an update here as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience,” WhatsApp said in a statement on Twitter.

According to the Verge, just as Facebook’s Antigone Davis was live on CNBC defending the company’s policies and its handling of research data suggesting Instagram is harmful to teens, its network of services suddenly went offline. Instagram.com is flashing a 5xx Server Error message, while the Facebook site merely tells us that something went wrong.

A peek at Down Detector reveals the problems are widespread. There’s no word yet from Facebook about what may be causing the problem or when those sites, including Messenger and WhatsApp, will be operational again, but we will update with more information when it’s available.

@bonganinkunzi