On Wednesday, Meta experienced a significant disruption across its suite of social media and messaging platforms, impacting users of Instagram, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Threads. By late afternoon, the majority of these applications were nearing full functionality once again.
Details of the Outage
Reports of issues began to surge around 10 a.m. PT, as users flocked to Downdetector to voice their frustrations. The web version of Instagram displayed error messages, while the mobile app was plagued by a persistent spinning wheel when users attempted to refresh their feeds. Although Stories remained operational, many users encountered a “couldn’t load activity” message in the “following” tab.
As the hours passed, the number of outage reports gradually declined, yet users still faced slow-loading pages and were often met with posts that were hours old. At 10:48 a.m. PT, Meta acknowledged the situation on X, stating, “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.”
Technical Insights
Cisco ThousandEyes attributed the outage to “internal server errors and timeouts,” suggesting potential complications within Meta’s backend services. Despite inquiries, Meta has not provided specific details regarding the root cause of the disruption.
Throughout the outage, users took to X (formerly Twitter) to share their experiences, seeking confirmation from others facing similar loading issues and posting humorous memes to cope with the inconvenience. Meta later updated its followers, expressing gratitude for their patience and reassuring them that they were “99% of the way there” in resolving the issues.
