Is Facebook down? Sort of... and there's a simple fix

Some online events unite people -- such as the recent solar eclipse which was streamed online by millions of people unable to see the spectacle in person. Another uniting event occurs when a major website goes down... like Facebook.

If you've tried to visit the social network today, you may well have found that the site doesn't load. "Is Facebook down?" you may ask, and you're not alone.

Take a look at the website monitoring service Down Detector and you'll notice that Facebook is indeed experiencing problems. If you can't access the site, you are in good company. There are plenty of other people all over the world having the same issue.

Down Detector's status page for Facebook shows that people from Europe and the US are experiencing problems getting their social networking fix, but there are issues all over the globe. For some people there are intermittent problems, or issues loading images, but more than half of people who have reported problems say they are experiencing a "total blackout."

Hitting refresh is not enough to get the site to load -- you need to force the site to refresh. To do this, hold down the Shift key while your press F5 or hit the refresh button in your browser's toolbar.

In addition to Down Detector, you can also monitor Facebook's problems in real-time using DownStatus.

Are you having trouble with the site?

Image credit: Naypong / Shutterstock