Facebook, Instagram, Messenger suffer global outages; locking millions out of Messenger and Threads
Daniel Levi
Posted On March 5, 2024
A massive global outage plunged millions of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Threads users into darkness as they found themselves locked out of their favorite social media platforms. The disruption, which started around 3:00 PM GMT, affected users globally, causing widespread login issues and rendering their accounts inaccessible.
Despite the frustration, Meta, the parent company of these platforms, has remained tight-lipped regarding the root cause of the outage. However, reports flooding in from sources like Downdetector, with over 200,000 users reporting issues, indicate the scale of the problem.
This recent incident echoes a similar disruption experienced in 2021, where Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus were all affected, lasting a substantial seven hours. It underscores the vulnerability of our dependence on these digital platforms and raises questions about their resilience to such technical hiccups.
Users flocked to social media to report that both Facebook and Instagram display “failure to load” error pages.
What a coincidence that Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube are down on Super Tuesday
Practice run for November? pic.twitter.com/5rIu1pQAE4
— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) March 5, 2024
“A MASSIVE global outage is underway on Facebook and Instagram. Users are being logged out and are unable to log back in, nor connect to the service at all. IS THIS SOME SORT OF CYBER ATTACK?” a user by the name of Nick asked on X (formerly Twitter).
https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1765042042361852037
While the outage has caused significant disruption, there is some relief on the horizon. Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are gradually coming back online after approximately two hours of downtime. Users experienced issues ranging from being logged out of Facebook accounts to the inability to refresh Instagram feeds and access Threads, which displayed an error message.
Meta acknowledged the issue on its status page, with a timestamped message at 10:17 AM ET, stating, “We are aware of an issue impacting Facebook Login. Our engineering teams are actively looking to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.” Subsequent updates on the status page indicated that services were in the process of being restored.
We're aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) March 5, 2024
As per reports from the outage tracking site Downdetector, disruptions began to hit Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger around 10:00 AM Eastern Time.
While Meta has yet to provide detailed commentary on the situation, Andy Stone, head of communications at Meta, acknowledged the disruption through a statement posted on X, Threads’ main competitor. Stone mentioned that the company was aware of the difficulties users were facing in accessing their services.
Tuesday’s outage serves as a stark reminder of the fragility of our digital infrastructure and the potential impact such disruptions can have on our daily lives. As users gradually regain access to their favorite platforms, the incident will undoubtedly prompt discussions around the resilience and reliability of tech giants like Meta in ensuring uninterrupted service delivery.
