Meta’s suite of popular apps, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, experienced significant technical disruptions on Wednesday afternoon, with thousands of users globally reporting outages on the platform status tracking site, DownDetector. It also checked the meta status, where the distribution has not yet been resolved.
The issues began around 12:30 p.m. EST, when a surge of complaints was recorded. According to DownDetector, by 1:10 p.m. EST, more than 100,000 Facebook users reported disruptions, accompanied by tens of thousands of similar reports for Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads.
As of 3.50 P.M. EST, the number of reported outages had significantly decreased:
- Facebook reports fell to less than 2000 now.
- Instagram and WhatsApp also saw a decline in user complaints.
Affected users attempting to access Facebook received an error message saying, “We’re working on getting this fixed as soon as we can.” Meta acknowledged the outages, confirming that Facebook Ads Manager, Messaging Ads, Messenger API for Instagram, and WhatsApp Business API were among the platforms facing “major disruptions.”
Meta’s Response
In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), Meta announced, “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.”
“We’re aware of some issues accessing WhatsApp. We’re actively working on a solution and starting to see a return to normal for most people. We expect things to be back to normal shortly.” WhatsApp reported.
At the time of reporting, Meta had not provided further details about the root cause of the outage.
Recent Patterns of Disruption
This is not the first large-scale outage Meta has faced in 2023. Back in March, a similar global outage disrupted Meta’s services for over two hours, impacting hundreds of thousands of users. During that incident, over 538,000 Facebook users and 91,000 Instagram users reported issues. Meta attributed that disruption to a technical issue.
The Meta disruption follows other notable tech outages in recent weeks:
- On November 25, Microsoft platforms experienced a prolonged outage lasting over a day. That incident coincided with the rollout of its Recall AI tool for Windows Insiders.
- Just days earlier, on November 21, Reddit users encountered two outages within 24 hours, with over 76,000 complaints logged.
Updates:
3:53 PM EST
“WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads Users are still experiencing outages, saying that both mobile and web versions are not working for many users.”
9:22 PM EST
WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads issues have been resolved, and the services are operational, but still, the issue persists with Meta Admin Center, Workplace from Meta, Graph API, marketing APT, & Ads Transparency.
Ongoing Updates
This is a developing story. Meta’s teams are actively working to resolve the issue. Updates will follow as more information becomes available.
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