On Wednesday, users reported problems accessing a number of Meta’s social media apps, including Facebook, Instagram, Threads and Messenger, according to outage tracking service Downdetector.
Reports of outages in cities across the United States began around 1 p.m. Eastern Time, according to Downdetector. Facebook and Instagram users reported having difficulty accessing apps and websites, while Messenger users reported having problems logging into the service and sending messages.
“We are aware that a technical issue is affecting some users’ ability to access our apps. We are working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and apologize for any inconvenience,” a spokesperson for Meta to CBS News earlier this year. afternoon.
A few hours later, at 5:26 p.m. Eastern Time, Meta announced that it was close to fixing the problem.
“Thanks for putting up with us! We’re 99% of the way there, just doing some final checks. We apologize to those who were affected by the outage,” the company posted on its X account.
At the height of the breakdown. Tens of thousands of users of the social media apps have reported problems to Downdetector, with nearly 90,000 reports of problems with Facebook as of 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time. Some Facebook users said that although they could access the site, they could not post or “like” other users’ posts.
“Meta-services, including Facebook and Instagram, are currently experiencing an outage that began around 5:55 p.m. UTC and is continuing,” wrote Cisco ThousandEyes, a technology services company. wrote on X Wednesday afternoon. “ThousandEyes detects internal server errors and timeouts, which may indicate problems with Meta’s backend services. Network connectivity to Meta’s frontend web servers is not affected.”
As of 2:45 p.m., thousands of Meta app users continued to report problems accessing services, although the number of reports slowed by late afternoon. There were approximately 4,000 outage reports on Downdetector for Facebook as of 4:20 p.m. Eastern Time.
WhatsApp users have also reported problems sending messages, according to Downdetector. WhatsApp, a popular service outside the United States for making calls to other users of the service, has received reports of problems from users in countries including Argentina and Brazil.
Wednesday’s outage follows widespread problems with Meta’s apps in March, when more than half a million users reported widespread issues, such as starting social media platforms and being unable to log in again. In this case, Meta blamed an unspecified “technical issue” that caused problems for users.
