ANKARA, TURKIYE - DECEMBER 5: In this photo illustration, logos of 'Instagram' and 'Facebook' are displayed on a laptop screen in Ankara, Turkiye on December 5, 2023. (Photo by Didem Mente/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Roommates, the answer is YES! Facebook (Meta) and Instagram went down today in a random outage. To be clear, all of Meta’s platforms weren’t working early Tuesday, including Threads, WhatsApp, and Messenger. The crash happened at about 10 a.m. ET, per DownDetector.
However, as of now, the platforms are live and kicking again. It’s unclear what exactly happened, but here’s everything we know so far.
According to Netblocks, an organization that tracks internet traffic, people in the U.S. weren’t the only ones scrambling to see what’s up with Facebook and Instagram. The outage affected multiple countries.
The issue reportedly had nothing to do with your personal internet connection — despite any messaging like that in the app. Netblocks reports that the “incident [is] not related to country-level internet disruptions or filtering.”
The disruption was mainly related to login sessions. Some users might’ve been logged out of Facebook in particular, promoted to change their password (or not), but overall prevented from logging in.
On Facebook, the message “Unable to log in. An unexpected error occurred. Please try logging in again” likely popped up on your screens.
DownDetector shared that the most reported problems with the platforms included app (60%), feed (27%), and login (13%).
So, you can relax, roomies. Your Instagram and Facebook accounts were likely not hacked. This is simply a Meta issue that has since seemingly been resolved.
We’re still waiting to hear what exactly went wrong, but a spokesperson for Meta clarified on X (formerly Twitter) that the company was working to get users their access back. It looks like that was successful, though it’s unclear if that’s just for U.S. users or other impacted countries as well.
Stone’s latest X post on the matter called the issue “technical.”
X is STILL hitting right now, as folks are cracking jokes and seeking answers about Facebook and Instagram previously being down!
Keep scrolling to catch a kii ’cause the memes are meme-ing!
Political teams that were likely scrambling today behind the outage can rest easy. It looks like Super Tuesday (today) will have its moment on those social platforms!
