Facebook, Instagram, Messenger Are Down in Worldwide Outage
Hundreds of thousands of users around the world have reported outages, according to Downdetector
Service on Meta Platforms’ META -1.01%decrease; red down pointing triangle Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and Threads was down Tuesday for hundreds of thousands of users around the world.
Over 500,000 users reported outages on Facebook, according to Downdetector, which tracks website outages. About 77,000 Instagram users and 12,000 Messenger users also reported outages.
The outages started to appear shortly after 10 a.m. ET, according to Downdetector. More than an hour later, outage reports started falling.
“We’re aware people are having trouble accessing our services,” Andy Stone, a Meta spokesman, said on X. “We are working on this now.”
In addition to the U.S., users in the U.K., Canada, Mexico and other countries also reported outages.
Biden administration officials said they hadn’t seen specific or credible threats attempting to disrupt Super Tuesday’s elections, but were monitoring the outages.
“We are aware of the incident and at this time we are not aware of any specific election nexus or any specific malicious cyber activity,” a senior Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency official said during a press call.
Federal officials said they were coordinating with states to address both the potential for physical or cyber threats to Tuesday’s voting, as they have during the past several election cycles.
These outages aren’t uncommon. Glitches, sometimes short and others longer, can disrupt people’s ability to conduct business or interact with friends. Meta has said it has 3.19 billion daily active people on average across its apps, including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp.
Meta also reported disruptions on its advertising and developer platforms, according to the company’s status page.
Meta had an outage in 2021 that lasted about six hours that disrupted service for millions of users.
X, the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter, poked fun at the outage Tuesday.
“We know why you’re all here rn,” the company said.
X owner Elon Musk also weighed in. “If you’re reading this post, it’s because our servers are working,” he wrote on X.