Users of Meta’s popular messaging platforms, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, faced a significant disruption this Friday, with reports of outages cascading across various regions worldwide. As messages stalled and failed to send, many turned to X to ascertain whether the issue stemmed from their own connections or was a broader system failure.
According to Downdetector, an online service that tracks outages, the United States saw over 4,000 reports related to WhatsApp, while India logged more than 10,000. Facebook Messenger also faced challenges, with nearly 1,000 error reports in the U.S. alone. In the United Kingdom, the situation was even more pronounced, with complaints exceeding 50,000. Among the issues reported, 70% of users indicated they were unable to send messages, while 22% experienced connection troubles and 19% reported general app malfunctions.
Immediate Reactions on Social Media
This incident is not an isolated one for Meta. A similar outage occurred in December of the previous year, which disrupted WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram on a global scale, leading to a wave of complaints. At that time, Downdetector recorded over 105,000 complaints for Facebook, 70,000 for Instagram, and 12,000 for WhatsApp. Meta issued an apology to its users and promised to work diligently to restore services as quickly as possible.
In the wake of the latest outage, social media reactions were immediate and often humorous. One user on X advised others, “Stop toggling airplane mode on and off. Stop refreshing your WhatsApp. It’s not your network, WhatsApp is down.” Another chimed in with a light-hearted comment, “WhatsApp went down just after someone asked me for banking information.”
The hashtag #WhatsappDown quickly gained traction on X, spawning a variety of memes that playfully mocked the situation. As of now, the Meta team, led by Mark Zuckerberg, has yet to address this latest disruption, leaving users eagerly awaiting updates on the restoration of services.
