Facebook acknowledged the problems in a tweet at 1.49pm New York time Wednesday, saying, "We're aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps. We're working to resolve the issue as soon as possible."

Facebook said in a follow-up post on Twitter at 3.03pm, "We're focused on working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, but can confirm that the issue is not related to a DDoS attack," referring to a denial-of-service brute-force attack, in which networks are overloaded with bogus traffic designed to disrupt service.

According to website DownDetector.com, user reports of problems accessing Facebook's apps began to spike at noon on Wednesday.

AAP

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