Facebook appears to have stopped working for some people.

People visiting the website are unable to see it, apparently because of a technical problem.

The website Down Detector reported that most people were seeing a "total blackout" on the site, meaning that it wouldn't load.

11 useful Facebook features you didn't know existed Show all 11 1 /11 11 useful Facebook features you didn't know existed 11 useful Facebook features you didn't know existed Clean up your News Feed Most of us are Facebook friends with some people we don’t actually care about, and there are several ways to keep their updates off your News Feed. The easiest option is to head to the column on the left and open News Feed Preferences. From here, you can prioritise friends, unfollow friends, refollow friends you unfollowed in the past and even block specific apps. 11 useful Facebook features you didn't know existed Change ad preferences You can view a list of everything Facebook thinks you’re into and tinker with your ad preferences. A lot more information is displayed on the desktop site than the app, so we’d recommend doing this on a computer. Just open Settings and select Advert Preferences. 11 useful Facebook features you didn't know existed Manage notifications You can get notifications about pretty much anything on Facebook these days, and that can be seriously irritating. Choose what you do and don’t want to be notified about by going into the Settings menu and selecting Notifications. You might be surprised by the number of sections you have to trawl through. 11 useful Facebook features you didn't know existed Save data Facebook automatically plays videos in your News Feed, and that’s a problem if you aren’t on a generous data plan. You can change this by going to Videos in the Settings menu and disabling autoplay. On the app, there’s feature in the left-hand column called Data Saver, which also does this, but reduces the size of pictures too. 11 useful Facebook features you didn't know existed Reorder your News feed You can choose to order the updates that appear in your News Feed by time or importance. Just hit the three buttons next to News Feed Preferences on the Facebook site and choose between Top Stories and Recent Stories. 11 useful Facebook features you didn't know existed Download your data Facebook lets you download all of the immense amounts of data it has on you, including the posts you’ve shared, your messages and photos, ads you’ve clicked on and even the IP addresses that are logged when you log in or out of the site. It’s a lot of information, which you’ll want to get your hands on if you decide to quit the social network. 11 useful Facebook features you didn't know existed Find nearby places Nearby Places is actually a really handy tool, which lets you quickly find and research things like restaurants, hotels, museums and nightlife hotspots around you. It lives in the left-hand column, and also shows useful information like customer ratings, prices and distance. 11 useful Facebook features you didn't know existed Find free Wi-Fi Similarly, Find Wi-Fi is ideal for when you’re bored, running low on data or lost. It shows you all the places in your vicinity that offer free Wi-Fi, so you can head over and either relax or get some work done. 11 useful Facebook features you didn't know existed Save things for later Facebook’s ideal for killing time, but every now and again you’ll stumble across something you’re interested in right as you need to put your phone away. Fortunately, you can save posts for later by hitting the arrow in the top-right corner and selecting the Save option. Everything you save goes straight to the Saved section in the left-hand column. 11 useful Facebook features you didn't know existed Control tags When people tag you in posts or pictures, they don’t have to automatically appear on your profile. You can switch on Facebook’s Review Tags feature by going to Settings and Timeline and Tagging. 11 useful Facebook features you didn't know existed Delete your account To permanently delete your Facebook account, you need to head to Facebook’s Delete Account page. The site can take up to 90 days to process account deletion requests, but once your account's gone, it’s gone. You can deactivate your account instead, by going to Security and Login in the Settings menu.

But it appears that forcing the computer to reload the page can bring the site back to life. That's done by holding down shift and then refreshing the page.

Clearing the cache might help avoid the problems recurring. In Chrome that's done by clicking the three dots in the corner, heading to "more tools", pressing "clear browsing data" and then choosing to remove the cache. In Safari, click the Preferences tab, head to Privacy, and select the option to "remove all browsing data".

The same problem appears to be hitting people trying to get on Facebook on their mobiles.

The problems are focused in the UK and northern Europe, according to Down Detector's map. But that might simply be because of timezones, which mean that more people are online in Europe than elsewhere.