Is Instagram down:
Social media platforms Facebook and Instagram experienced a global outage on Tuesday, affecting hundreds of thousands of users for more than an hour. The disruptions began around 10:00 am ET (1500 GMT), with users reporting being unable to log in and experiencing difficulties accessing the platforms. According to Downdetector.com, there were over 300,000 reports of outages for Facebook and 40,000 reports for Instagram.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone acknowledged the issue, stating, “We’re aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now.” Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has approximately 3.19 billion daily active users across its family of apps, which also includes WhatsApp and Threads. The outage also affected WhatsApp Business, although to a lesser extent, with under 200 incident reports.
Internal systems at Meta were also impacted, with some employees reporting difficulties accessing work systems, leading to speculation about potential layoffs. The outage quickly became a top trending topic on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), with platform owner Elon Musk chiming in with a cheeky remark about server functionality.
After several hours, Meta platforms including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads were restored. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed that the technical issue causing the outage had been resolved “as quickly as possible.” However, during the outage, users also reported being logged out of their accounts, and disruptions extended to Facebook Messenger.
The outage occurred on Super Tuesday, a crucial day for primary elections in over a dozen states, raising concerns about potential impacts on communication and misinformation dissemination. Despite the widespread nature of the outage, there were no specific indications of malicious cyber activity, according to a senior official from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
This isn’t the first time Meta has faced such an issue, as a similar widespread outage occurred in 2021 due to a routine maintenance error. Elon Musk, known for his presence on social media, couldn’t resist commenting on the situation, humorously noting the functionality of his platform during the outage.
In summary, the recent outage of Meta platforms highlighted the reliance of billions of users on these services for communication and information dissemination, while also underscoring the vulnerabilities inherent in such centralized platforms.