Millions of users worldwide experienced disruptions on Friday after Meta-owned social media platforms Facebook and Instagram suffered a widespread outage.
The incident affected Facebook’s website, mobile application and Messenger service, with many users reporting that they were unexpectedly logged out of their accounts. Attempts to sign back in reportedly resulted in error messages, while some visitors were informed that the company was working to fix the problem.
As the disruption spread, users turned to X to verify whether others were facing similar issues. Reports of service failures quickly surfaced from different parts of the world, suggesting that the outage was not limited to a specific region.
Although Facebook and Instagram were the primary platforms affected, WhatsApp appeared to remain largely functional despite sharing infrastructure with other Meta services. However, some Instagram users also reported difficulties accessing the platform’s website.
Downdetector, a service that monitors online outages, recorded a significant increase in complaints related to Facebook and other Meta products during the disruption.
At the time of reporting, Meta had not provided an official explanation for the outage. The company’s business services status page also had not been updated to reflect the incident.
The outage left millions temporarily disconnected, highlighting the reliance of users worldwide on Meta’s social media platforms for communication and information sharing.
