The world was thrown into chaos on Tuesday morning as Facebook, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram all experienced widespread outages, leaving millions of users unable to access their favorite social media platforms.
According to Down Detector, a website that tracks user reports of telecommunication and internet disruptions, the issues began around 10 a.m. Eastern time. More than 25,000 users in the U.S. reported problems with Facebook, with over 538,000 reports of trouble with the website by 10:20 a.m. The majority of complaints were related to logging in.
Instagram and Facebook Messenger also experienced outages, with more than 91,000 people reporting issues with Instagram and over 13,600 users reporting problems with Facebook Messenger. The outages appeared to be affecting users globally, with reports coming in from the United Kingdom, Germany, Argentina, Japan, and other countries.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, acknowledged the issues, with spokesman Andy Stone stating, “We’re aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now.” Meta hosts over 3.98 billion users across its apps each month.
As users scrambled to find out what was happening, some turned to Twitter to see if others were experiencing similar problems. The outage comes just ahead of a deadline for Meta and other tech giants to comply with the Digital Markets Act, a new European Union law aimed at increasing competition in the digital economy.
This is a developing story, so stay tuned for updates on the situation. In the meantime, users are advised to remain calm and patient as the technical issues are addressed.
