On Monday, a widespread outage disrupted the services of Meta Platforms’ social media apps, Instagram and Facebook, as well as the messaging app WhatsApp and their Twitter-rival Threads. Downdetector.com, a platform that monitors service outages, recorded a significant number of user-reported issues during the peak of the disruption, which lasted over an hour. According to Downdetector.com, more than 14,000 users encountered difficulties accessing Instagram, while around 7,000 users experienced problems with Facebook, and approximately 2,700 users faced issues with WhatsApp, as mentioned in a report by Economic Times.
Even Meta’s newest offering, Threads, was not spared from the outage, with about 470 users reporting problems accessing the app. However, it is worth noting that the actual number of affected users could have been higher, as Downdetector relies on user-submitted error reports. Despite the impact on its platforms, Meta has yet to respond to queries from Reuters regarding the outages.
The issue first emerged at 3:19 AM 1ST (2:49 PM PT) and reached its peak within half an hour. Instagram experienced the highest number of problems, with 62 percent of users reporting issues with the app, while 19 percent were unable to access the website. Server connection problems were reported by 18 percent of users. For WhatsApp, 49 percent of reports focused on app usage, 27 percent on server connections, and 24 percent on website connectivity challenges. While the cause of the simultaneous outage remains unknown, services have now been restored, with the number of reports on the outage monitoring website significantly dropping. Notably, Threads, Meta’s newest platform that integrates data from Instagram, remained relatively stable during the disruption, with only a minor spike of approximately 500 reports.