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On Wednesday, Meta’s suite of applications experienced a wide disruption, leaving users unable to access popular platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. The technical difficulties began around 9:57 a.m. PST, which affected not only Meta’s primary social media services but also extended to Threads, WhatsApp, and Messenger.
The scale of the outage was substantial, with Downdetector, an internet monitoring service, reporting that over 100,000 users encountered issues with Facebook alone at the peak of the disruption, which occurred at approximately 10:11 a.m. PST.
Meta addressed the situation through posts on the social media platform X. “We’re aware that a technical issue is impacting some users’ ability to access our apps. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and apologize for any inconvenience,” the company stated.
Instagram also separately acknowledged the outage on X, confirming that they were aware of “a technical issue affecting some users’ ability to access Instagram.”
As the day progressed, Meta provided updates on the situation. In an afternoon post on X, the company reported that they were “99% of the way there – just doing some last checks.” Shortly after, Instagram announced its return to service with a lighthearted message. “Andddd we’re back — sorry for the wait, and thanks for bearing with us”.
The incident follows a similar outage that occurred in March 2024, which lasted approximately two hours and coincided with the Super Tuesday U.S. presidential primaries.