Meta’s Platforms Face Widespread Outage, Disrupting Billions Worldwide

On Wednesday, Meta’s suite of applications—Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Threads—experienced significant outages, leaving billions of users worldwide grappling with limited or no access to the platforms. The tech giant acknowledged the disruption, attributing it to a “technical issue” but has yet to reveal the specific cause.

In a statement shared on X (formerly Twitter) at 1:48 p.m. ET, Meta said, “We’re”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 apologise for any inconvenience.”

Instagram echoed the sentiment in a similar post on X, using the hashtag #instagramdown to highlight the issue. Meanwhile, WhatsApp confirmed its disruptions but reported that services were “starting to see a return to normal for most people.”

Reports of issues surged dramatically, with Facebook receiving over 97,000 incident reports and Instagram exceeding 67,000 in the same timeframe.

Concurrently, Meta’s status page for business services indicated “major disruptions” affecting Facebook Ads Manager, Messenger APIs, and other tools like Workplace from Meta, some of which were noted as “recovering.”

Adding to the chaos, user reports of downtime flooded platforms like X and Bluesky, fuelling frustration among individuals and businesses reliant on Meta’s services for communication, advertising, and daily operations.