Facebook and Instagram have reportedly gone down, suggesting a widespread outage affecting the platforms of their parent company, Meta.
Users reported receiving error messages and were subsequently logged out of both the app and the desktop site, preventing the feeds from refreshing.
Has Facebook and Messenger logged you out and then rejects your password?
Don't panic, you're not alone, LOADS of people seem to be experiencing this right now.
I guess we just gotta wait and see what the heck this is 🤷♂️ pic.twitter.com/YiQz17AeXR
— Talha Ali (@TalhaAli781) March 5, 2024
According to Downdetector, there were more than 250,000 reports of outages on Facebook and 45,000 reports on Instagram. WhatsApp had almost 1,000 incidents, and Threads was also encountering some issues.
Reports indicate that the impact has been felt in multiple countries worldwide.
ReadWrite has approached Meta for a comment. The tech giant’s own status page shows that a number of products, including some of the developer tools and business platforms, were experiencing some disruptions.
In a statement on their site, it said: “We are aware of an issue users are having logging into our platforms. Our engineering teams are aware and are actively looking to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
“We are currently recovering from an earlier outage affecting the ability to log in to our platforms. Services are in the process of being restored. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused,” it later updated.
However, some users report that Facebook has resumed its services, while Instagram remains down.
A Meta spokesperson told ReadWrite: “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.”
Update: Services definitely seem to be returning for some, but others are still unable to get in with their existing passwords, so it seems things are not quite back to normal.
Meta’s previous outages
It’s not the first time Meta has experienced an outage. In 2019, there was a worldwide disruption where Facebook’s services and servers encountered technical issues, particularly affecting Europe, some parts of the US, and Asia. This occurred just one month following another significant outage.
At the time, Facebook posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) a short statement blaming their issues on a server configuration change.
Featured image: Pexels
