Meta’s social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, resumed service after a worldwide outage lasting over an hour on Tuesday. The company apologised for the inconvenience caused by a technical glitch that disrupted access. “We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone impacted,” said a Meta spokesperson.
Global users reported difficulties accessing these platforms, with disruptions beginning around 8 pm PST. Downdetector.com logged over 300,000 Facebook and 40,000 Instagram outage reports. Meta’s Andy Stone acknowledged the issues on platform X, assuring efforts to restore access. Instagram users encountered a “Something went wrong” error while Facebook and Messenger sessions expired, preventing re-logging in with an “unexpected error” message.
By 8:20 pm, Downdetector received 353,256 Facebook inaccessibility reports. NetBlocks also confirmed the suspension, clarifying it wasn’t due to internet disruptions or filtering but related to login sessions. The outage sparked widespread discussion on X, with users seeking confirmation of the issue. Elon Musk, X’s owner, humorously noted, “If you’re reading this post, it’s because our servers are working.”
Meta, with approximately 3.19 billion daily active users across its apps, saw a 1.5% drop in shares during the outage. The WhatsApp Business API also encountered problems, although WhatsApp and Threads reported fewer incidents. Post-Musk’s acquisition of X, the platform has experienced service disruptions, including a significant outage in December affecting over 77,000 users globally.
