Bad news for those who like to check what their friends are up to: Facebook is currently down.

According to first-hand accounts from Downdetector and Tom's Guide, Facebook went down around 5:30 PM ET on April 8. When attempting to access the site, they received an error message that read, "Sorry, something went wrong. We are working to fix this as soon as possible." error message appeared.

Update (5:55 PM EST): The outage appears to have been fixed.

The DownDetector status page indicates that the problem is quite widespread, with users across the US reporting the outage. According to the following user comments, it appears that Facebook is also experiencing outages around the world.

The problem does not seem to be limited to Facebook: Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Oculus (all Facebook-owned properties) also do not seem to be functioning.

The outage is affecting the desktop interface as well as the mobile apps of these sites, although we have successfully posted to Instagram from the iOS app.

This is the second major outage in the past three weeks, affecting literally billions of people across the planet.

No official word yet from Facebook, but we will update this post as soon as we receive further news.