Meta is having a rough Tuesday after a widespread outage hit an untold number of its social media users.
At around 10 a.m. ET on Tuesday, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, among Meta's many other platforms, suffered an outage. Soon after, the platform's users took to Down Detector and outage-communication tools to report the problem.
At its height, more than half a million people reported a Facebook outage and more than two hours later, there are still people saying they can't access the platforms. Down Detector recorded 77,000 Instagram user complaints and another 12,000 Messenger reports. It's important to note, however, that Down Detector does not represent the entire population of users who have suffered an outage. The real number for each platform is likely significantly higher.
In an odd twist, Meta, which couldn't acknowledge the outage on its own platforms, was forced to take to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, to release a statement on the matter.
"We're aware people are having trouble accessing our services," Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said on X. "We are working on this now."
Of course, not long after the outage occurred, users took to other social media platforms to question what was going on. Some suggested Meta had been hacked, while others said it was an internal problem. Along the way, Meta said nothing, prompting further questions.
It's not the first time Meta has faced such an outage. In 2021, the company's platforms were down for more than six hours as it raced to bring them back online. Meta eventually said that its platforms failed due to networking issues. The problem was compounded by internal systems going down alongside the public-facing services, causing a longer delay in restoring service.
Hours after the outage started, Stone returned to X, saying that the issue had been addressed and apologized for the outage, which he said was caused by an unidentified "technical issue."
"Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services," Stone said. "We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience."
It's unclear how widespread Tuesday's problem was, but it appears to have extended far beyond the company's core platforms. Meta's Status and Outages tool showed nearly every service, including its Ads Manager, Marketing API, and Facebook logins as suffering from disruptions. Even the WhatsApp Business API that companies use to connect to the messaging platform was facing "major disruptions."
Oddly, the outages didn't seem to affect everyone equally, and at no time did any of Meta's social networks go down entirely. Instead, some Facebook users found that when they tried to log in to the social network, they had been booted out. While they could input their usernames and passwords, they were unable to log in. Still, others that use two-factor authentication found that the codes sent to their devices never arrived.
However, even in the same households, users have reported different experiences. In some cases, one person was able to sign on to Instagram, while another could not.
Another Big Tech Hiccup
The Meta outage is the second major hiccup for big tech companies in the past few weeks. Last month, AT&T suffered a widespread outage that took its service down for hours. However, like the Meta outage, only some people in the AT&T network were affected by the apparent internal technical glitch.
In that case, the company quickly apologized, but the Federal Communications Commission said it would launch an investigation. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security also said that they were keeping a close eye on the outage.
As of this writing, no government agencies have said they're stepping in to evaluate the Meta outage, and they haven't suggested they would investigate the matter. But depending on the cause, that could change.
Not surprisingly, some folks, including Meta's own Threads competitor X, poked fun at the Meta outage.
"We all know why you're here rn (sic)," X posted to its official account.
Not to be outdone, X owner Elon Musk took to his own account to share his thoughts on the Meta outage.
"If you're reading this post," Must wrote on his account, "it's because our servers are working."
About the author: Don Reisinger is a longtime freelance writer who has written on topics as far-ranging as technology and business to science topics. His work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Fortune, Inc., The New York Times, Business Insider, Tom's Guide, and many others. Follow him at https://muckrack.com/donreisinger and https://twitter.com/donreisinger
