A technical glitch at Meta on Wednesday afternoon caused significant disruptions for users of its popular applications, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The issue began around noon, leading to a surge in outage reports that peaked at over 90,000 for Facebook alone, as noted by Downdetector. By 4:30 p.m., after more than three hours of challenges, Meta communicated via X, formerly known as Twitter, that they were “99%” finished resolving the problem.
While the company extended its apologies for the inconvenience, it refrained from disclosing the specific cause of the outage, leaving users in the dark about the underlying issues.
Outage Trends Across Platforms
The impact of the outage varied across Meta’s platforms:
- Facebook: Reports soared to over 90,000 around noon, but by 1:45 p.m., the numbers had dropped to under 17,000. By 5 p.m., fewer than 1,000 outages were still being reported.
- Instagram: Similar patterns emerged, with outage reports climbing to nearly 70,000 at noon. By 1:45 p.m., this number decreased to less than 19,000, and by 5 p.m., around 1,600 outages remained.
- WhatsApp: The messaging platform experienced fewer disruptions, peaking at approximately 9,000 reports around 12:15 p.m. and again at 1:30 p.m.
According to Downdetector, the majority of users reporting issues were located in major metropolitan areas such as Dallas, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
This incident is reminiscent of a similar outage in March, when Meta’s platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Messenger, faced prolonged downtime, preventing users from logging in or refreshing their feeds, as reported by the Associated Press.
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