For several hours, the social media, photo-sharing, threading, and messaging services of IT behemoth Meta were all inaccessible to users. The business took responsibility for the situation on X and assured affected users that the problem had been fixed immediately. Users said they could not access their Facebook accounts or feeds and that Instagram and Threads would not refresh. Meta’s other product, WhatsApp, seemed unaffected.
The United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said they were unaware of any malicious cyberactivity.
This downtime occurred right before Thursday when large tech businesses are supposed to comply with the new Digital Markets Act of the European Union. Meta is implementing modifications to meet the requirements, enabling users to keep their Instagram and Facebook accounts separate. This prevents the combination of personal information for online ad targeting. Whether or not Meta’s preparations for the DMA are related to the outage is unclear.
All of the social media platforms were unavailable for many hours, a period the parent company blamed on incorrect configuration modifications to the routers that manage data transfer across its facilities.
Over half a million users reported troubles earlier in the day, with many claiming they were kicked out of the social media sites and unable to get back in; Meta announces that its Facebook and Instagram services have been restored.
At approximately 10:30 a.m. ET, the website DownDetector, which tracks internet service failures, said that over 500,000 Facebook users in the US and over 70,000 Instagram users had reported issues. Issues with Instagram and Facebook logins were the most often mentioned problems.
Tech site 9to5Mac reports that Meta Quest’s virtual reality goggles were also checked out.
This was a “major outage incident,” and even the official status page of the company is displaying “Unknown” at the moment.
