Facebook, Instagram, and Threads experienced widespread downtime for many users on Tuesday morning. Users worldwide reported issues such as being logged out of their Facebook accounts and encountering difficulties logging back in, as well as the inability to refresh their Instagram feeds.
Error messages like “We’re sorry, but something went wrong. Please try again” greeted some Instagram users during the outage. According to monitoring service Downdetector, reports of errors began surfacing just after 10:30 a.m. EST, with over 500,000 error reports received by 11 a.m.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone acknowledged the issue in a post on the social media site X (previously known as Twitter), stating, “We’re aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now.”
This outage comes on the heels of a massive worldwide outage experienced by Facebook in 2021, lasting six hours, attributed to “configuration changes on backbone routers.”
Affected users found themselves unable to load Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger apps or websites as usual. Some Facebook users reported being logged out and unable to log back in, while Instagram failed to function altogether.
Concerns over account security emerged as users received warnings about being logged out, leading to trending phrases on Twitter/X. However, the error messages seem to stem from Facebook’s login system issues rather than a hack or cyber attack. Meta does not maintain official status pages for its consumer products, but Andy Stone’s post on Twitter/X clarified Meta’s awareness of the problems and ongoing efforts to address them.
Tracking website Down Detector indicated significant outages at Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger, with reports coming from various regions globally, suggesting a widespread outage.
While Meta operates a status page for its business products, indicating normal functionality, WhatsApp, also owned by Meta, appeared to be unaffected.
This situation is still unfolding, and updates may follow.