Meta-owned Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram, are all facing a global outage, leaving hundreds of thousands of users unable to access these social media platforms. According to reports, an insider at Facebook said that internal systems within the company are also affected, potentially contributing to the outage experienced on Tuesday.
Problems emerged at approximately 10:20 am ET, affecting all apps and websites associated with social media platforms. On Tuesday morning, Meta’s prominent social media platforms and Alphabet’s video-uploading platform notified users of a “failure to load” issue.
Global Outage on Super Tuesday
DownDetector, a service that tracks online outages, indicates that over 200,000 Americans are experiencing issues with Facebook while more than 30,000 users reported problems with Instagram. Messenger has slightly over 8,000 reports of issues.
Meta communications director Andy Stone has confirmed the outage in a post on X, noting, “We’re aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now.”
Glitches on Facebook and Messenger became apparent as users observed being unexpectedly logged out of their accounts and facing difficulties logging back in, despite using the correct credentials. Instagram’s News Feed displayed an error message during the same period.
The outage map from DownDetector indicates widespread issues, with major U.S. cities like New York City, Boston, Chicago, and various cities in California marked in red. Beyond the United States, the outage has extended to the UK, parts of Europe, China, Australia, and Mexico.
The majority of reported problems relate to the apps, with 72 percent for Facebook, 64 percent for Instagram, and 50 percent for Messenger, according to user reports.
Highly Uncommon
The widespread outage affecting Meta is highly uncommon, considering the company’s extensive network and built-in redundancies.
Some people are expressing suspicion about the timing of this outage, especially given that it coincides with Super Tuesday—a significant day for elections across various U.S. states.
The outage is particularly inconvenient for candidates and political organizations engaged in last-minute voter outreach efforts or reminders, as millions of people head to the polls on this crucial election day.
Meta’s suite of apps, including WhatsApp, has played a significant role during the election cycle, reaching 3.98 million monthly active users by the end of the previous year, according to the company’s data.
To mitigate its potential influence on election outcomes, Meta typically disables political ads leading up to key elections, such as the U.S. midterms. In response to emerging concerns, Meta has also announced plans to label political ads using AI-generated imagery for the 2024 election cycle.
It’s a developing story.
