Millions flock to Signal as Facebook, WhatsApp suffer outage

Millions of new users joined the communications app on Monday, Signal said on Twitter. — AFP

Signal, the private messaging app endorsed by Edward Snowden, saw user sign-ups soar during the extended downtime of Facebook Inc’s network of apps and services.

Millions of new users joined the communications app on Monday, Signal said on Twitter. Facebook suffered a six-hour outage that spanned its WhatsApp messenger, the main social network and photo-sharing app Instagram, shutting out many of its 2.7 billion global users. The situation idled some of the company’s employees and prompted a public apology from the chief technology officer.