Facebook and Instagram experienced significant disruption early on Monday morning, leaving users worldwide unable to log in or access content. The widespread technical failure, which potentially affected billions, saw tens of thousands of reports on outage monitoring sites before services were largely restored.
Widespread Facebook and Instagram Outage Reported
Shortly before 1:30am BST, users began reporting issues across Meta’s platforms, with outage monitoring site DownDetector showing huge spikes in reports globally. Tens of thousands of people struggled to use Facebook, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger, according to GB News. Reports for Facebook peaked at over 17,000 around 2:16am BST, indicating a substantial impact on the platforms, which each boast over three billion monthly active users.
Users described being unable to access websites and apps, often getting stuck on a screen showing the logo without progressing further. While Facebook, Instagram, and Threads were affected, Meta’s messaging service WhatsApp continued to function normally during the disruption, GB News noted.
Service Restoration and Unconfirmed Causes
Access to the social media platforms appeared to be restored shortly before 3:00am BST. However, Meta’s media relations office has not issued an official statement outlining the direct reasons behind the technical issues for this specific incident, as reported by Roya News.
Technology experts suggest that the disruptions are likely the result of routine server maintenance and updates, or potentially underlying network faults within service provider infrastructure. GB News confirmed they had approached Meta for comment following the overnight outage.
Previous Meta Platform Disruptions
This is not the first time Meta platforms have faced widespread outages. The company has experienced several high-profile disruptions in recent years. In June, users encountered issues accessing Facebook and Instagram, with Downdetector recording over 62,000 Facebook and 8,000 Instagram reports. A partial outage affecting apps and websites occurred again the following month.
These recent events, however, were not comparable to Meta’s significant October 2021 global outage. During that six-hour disruption, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp all went offline due to a configuration error, which Facebook later attributed to a routine maintenance job that unintentionally disconnected data centres from the internet. Mark Zuckerberg eventually apologised for the 2021 incident, according to GB News.
