Facebook and Instagram went down for millions of users worldwide
Facebook and Instagram grappled with widespread disruptions, leaving potentially millions of users unable to access these popular social media platforms on a global scale. The outage also impacted Threads, Instagram’s competitor to X, and Facebook Messenger, while WhatsApp, a Meta-owned app, experienced a brief and minor disruption affecting hundreds of users.
Around 3 pm, when the issues first surfaced on Down Detector, reports quickly surpassed 90,000 for Facebook and 15,000 for Instagram within half an hour. At its peak, the UK witnessed over 250,000 Facebook users reporting problems, with the US experiencing an outage reported by over half a million users.
Login issues constituted 40% of the reports on Down Detector, with users facing difficulties loading the apps or websites as usual. Facebook users found themselves unexpectedly logged out, while Instagram simply refused to function. The prevalent error messages suggested issues with the platform’s login system rather than a breach or cyber attack.
While the outage appeared to impact all platforms on Facebook, 89% of Instagram reports pinpointed issues with the app, although Instagram has significantly fewer desktop users compared to Facebook.
Facebook has 2 billion daily active users, Instagram has around 500 million.
We know some people were having trouble accessing our apps earlier. Apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused, and thank you for your patience while our teams worked quickly to resolve!
— Meta Newsroom (@MetaNewsroom) March 5, 2024
Duncan is a technology professional with over 20 years experience of working in various IT roles. He has a interest in cyber security, and has a wide range of other skills in radio, electronics and telecommunications.