Facebook says it is aware of outages on its platforms including Facebook, Messenger and Instagram and is working to resolve the issue.

Facebook, Messenger and Instagram apps are are displayed on an iPhone on Wednesday, March 13, 2019, in New York. Facebook says it is aware of outages on its platforms including Facebook, Messenger and Instagram and is working to resolve the issue. [Photo: AP]

According to Facebook's status page , the outages started around 11 a.m. EDT on Wednesday. That page, which calls the problem a "partial outage," states that Facebook has experienced "increased error rates" since that time.

Downdetector.com, a site that monitors site outages, said the Facebook problem affected parts of the U.S., including the East and West Coast; parts of Europe and elsewhere. Both Facebook's desktop site and app appeared to be affected. Some users saw a message that said Facebook was down for "required maintenance."

Facebook did not say what was causing the outages.

Via its Twitter account, Facebook said the outage was not due to a "distributed denial of service" or DDoS attack, a type of attack that hackers use to interrupt service to a site.