Tech
Tech Giant Meta Has Major Outage of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads
On Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of users were unable to access Meta’s platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, due to a “technical issue.” The issue was resolved within about two hours.
According to outage tracker Downdetector, up to 500,000 Facebook users had reported difficulty logging in or accessing the site as of mid-morning Eastern Time on Tuesday.
Around 50,000 outage reports had been issued for Instagram, and another 10,000 for Facebook Messenger, albeit the number of reports had already begun to decline within an hour of their inception.
Some individuals discovered they had been logged out of their Facebook accounts. Others received Instagram messages that “something went wrong” and their feeds were unable to load.
Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience. https://t.co/ybyyAZNAMn
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) March 5, 2024
Threads, Meta’s competitor to Elon Musk’s X, also fell down, displaying a popup that stated “Something went wrong, please try again later” instead of their feed.
On Tuesday, Meta’s status page displayed “major disruptions” affecting Facebook login and other aspects of the platform.
“We are aware that consumers are having difficulty accessing our services. “We are currently working on this,” Meta representative Andy Stone wrote on X Tuesday.
According to Downdetector, less than 80,000 people reported problems with Facebook about an hour and a half after the outage began.
Reports on Instagram and Messenger had also reduced significantly. Downdetector only counts users who report issues, therefore the actual number of affected people is likely larger.
Meta announced shortly after 12:00 ET that it has rectified the issue.
“Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services,” Stone stated in an interview with X. “We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”
Major platform outages occur seldom but are usually the consequence of something minor, such as a problem with a software update. Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp were down for about six hours in 2021, but the company assured users that it was not due to criminal activities.
“We are aware of availability concerns with several of Meta’s services. At this moment, we are not aware of any specific malicious cyber activity or connection to today’s elections,” a representative for the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency told CNN on Tuesday, referring to Tuesday’s Super Tuesday primary voting.
Many people are still thinking about service interruptions after AT&T experienced a nearly 12-hour network outage late last month, preventing many customers from placing calls, sending messages, or accessing the internet from their mobile devices.
According to the Associated Press, the disruption occurred just days before the deadline for Big Tech businesses to comply with the European Union’s new Digital Markets Act. They indicated that Meta’s Facebook and Instagram will need to make modifications in order to comply, but it’s unclear whether the downtime is related to any preparations the firm is making.
According to the Associated Press, a senior official with the United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency stated that there is no “specific election nexus nor any specific malicious cyberactivity nexus” associated to the Facebook outage.
