Facebook and Instagram experienced widespread outages, leaving a significant number of users unable to access the popular social media platforms. The outage appears to be affecting users globally.
Reports of the issue began flooding in on Down Detector, surpassing 90,000 for Facebook and 15,000 for Instagram within half an hour. While the outage seemed to impact all Facebook platforms, a notable 89% of Instagram reports were related to the app, despite its lower desktop user base compared to Facebook.
Frustrated users took to Twitter, formerly known as X, to express their concerns. Kaye tweeted, “Is Meta down or am I being hacked? My Instagram isn’t loading and my Facebook is also ‘session logged out’.” Login issues accounted for 40% of reports on Down Detector, with users worldwide, including those in the US, Brazil, Africa, India, and Guatemala, sharing their experiences using the hashtag #instagramdown.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has yet to respond to user posts or address the outage through its corporate Twitter account or the Facebook and Instagram platforms. This incident marks a notable occurrence as both Meta-owned sites have experienced separate outages in recent weeks, but never simultaneously.
A few days ago, Meta announced that in early April 2024, they will deprecate Facebook News – a dedicated tab in the bookmarks section on Facebook that spotlights news – in the US and Australia. This follows their September 2023 announcement that deprecated Facebook News in the UK, France and Germany last year.
