Facebook and Instagram down - updates: Meta gives reason for worldwide outage
Outage was global, according to tracking website Down Detector
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The global Facebook and Instagram outage that left potentially millions unable to access their accounts was caused by an unspecified “technical issue”, Meta has said.
Users found they were mysteriously logged out and not able to log back in, or could not open the app at all.
The outage was global, according to tracking website Down Detector, where tens of thousands of users reported being unable to access their account.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the issue was resolved on Tuesday and apologised on behalf of the tech giant without revealing much in terms of details.
“Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologise for any inconvenience,” Mr Stone said.
Services appear to be coming back online – but problems remain
While numerous people are finding themselves able to get online, problems still remain. Some can’t get online or are having other problems.
Tracking website Down Detector shows an decrease in reports of problems – but, again, they’ve not gone away entirely.
And the Meta status page for business products is no longer yellow (as below) but some are turning green, to indicate “no known issues”, and some are turning red, for “major disruptions”.
Elon Musk continues to mock Meta
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone has posted that Meta is aware of the outage. Elon Musk appears to be making fun of him.
Services appear to be coming back online
Multiple people are reporting that they’re able to log back in again, in various parts of the world. It looks like Meta’s products are coming back online.
(Some note that they’re able to get online on their phone but not on their PC, for example; if you’re still seeing error messages or other problems, and are desperate to get online, it might be worth checking on your other devices.)
Meta’s status page turns yellow
I noted earlier (here) that Meta had updated its status page to reflect the outage. Now the whole thing has turned yellow, with the status of the entirety of Meta’s business products seemingly being “unknown”.
Elon Musk mocks outage
Elon Musk has posted, seemingly in response to the outage.
When Mr Musk took over X/Twitter, in late 2022, there was much speculation about whether the layoffs and other changes he made would bring new outages.
The site has sometimes gone down – notably doing so late last year, for instance – but has mostly worked in the time since.
‘Session logged out'
You’re probably not being hacked. On Twitter/X, people are expressing concern that the technical problems are the result of a cyber attack, or them having their account stolen – which isn’t helped by the fact that Facebook shows an ominous “session logged out” warning.
That appears to be the result of the outage, and the problems with logging into Facebook that it has brought, however.
Other platforms showing problems at Down Detector
Some are noting that other big platforms – including YouTube and Gmail – appear to be showing issues on tracking website Down Detector.
But that’s probably because of the way Down Detector tracks outages, which is by using automated systems that look for clues on Twitter/X and elsewhere. That sometimes means that when there’s a very big outage, it can look like there are problems elsewhere too.
(This happened with the recent AT&T outage, when other carriers and platforms appeared to have problems. But it was in fact just people complaining about that outage – and finding that it meant they could not text people on other networks, or get onto online services.)
Meta business page updates to reflect outage
Meta doesn’t have an official status page for platforms such as Facebook, Messenger or Instagram. But it does have one for the businesses that rely on them.
Initially, that had shown no problems. Now, however, it has updated to reflect the outage.
It shows there are problems at “Meta Admin Center”, which is used for the company’s business tools. It also shows problems with its developer platform, including the Facebook Login tool and its WhatsApp and Marketing tools.
Hello and welcome...
... to our live coverage of a major outage at Meta.
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