Like around the world, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have crashed across the country, 24NewsHD TV channel reported on Monday.

Facebook communications executive Andy Stone took to Twitter to announce that all-out resources are being utilised to fix the fault.

"We are aware some people were having trouble accessing Facebook apps and products.

'We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience,' the executive said in a tweet.

According to DownDetector (online platform), the issues started at around 16:44 BST (11:44 ET), and are affecting all users. By 17:24 BST over 50,000 people had reported issues.

We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.

— Andy Stone (@andymstone) October 4, 2021

The three social media services, all owned by Facebook, run on a shared back end infrastructure, and other Facebook-owned services are also down, including Facebook Workplace and the Oculus website.

Soon after the first report came through, the hashtag #facebookdown was trending on Twitter, with user's worldwide reporting issues connecting.

Outage tracker Downdetector was showing outages in heavily populated areas like Washington and Paris, with problems being reported from around 1545 GMT. Downdetector showed there were more than 20,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Facebook and Instagram.