Facebook, Instagram, and Threads Were All Down Today
Meta properties, which includes Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, all experienced a widespread outage this morning.
Update 3/5: Meta spokesperson Andy Stone posted an update on X, formerly Twitter, around 12:20 PM ET, apologizing the inconvenience caused by the Meta service outage.
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 apologize for any inconvenience. https://t.co/ybyyAZNAMn
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) March 5, 2024
Update 3/5: As of 11:55 AM ET, Meta’s properties, including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are back online for some users. It may take a bit longer for the services to be fully operational for all users, as some are still reporting issues to Down Detector. The original story continues below.
All three of Meta’s social media sites are either not loading correctly or booting users back out to the login screen and not letting them log back in. On Facebook, it can appear as though a password is incorrect, but multiple attempts to reset still does not allow users to log in.
On Instagram, login is working but feeds are not refreshing. Even if feeds are working, stories and comments may not load correctly. Over on Threads is a similar situation, although the entire site appears down for PetaPixel staffers who are being greeted with simply the message, “something went wrong, try again later.”
ℹ️ Note: Meta platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Threads are currently experiencing outages related to login sessions in multiple countries; incident not related to country-level internet disruptions or filtering #FacebookDown #InstagramDown #ThreadsDown pic.twitter.com/0yR5mKCoQY
— NetBlocks (@netblocks) March 5, 2024
Down Detector is showing a huge spike in outages reported in the last 15 minutes, which is further indication that something isn’t right over at Meta.
We're aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) March 5, 2024
The last time Meta apps experienced this level of an outage was back in 2021 when Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Oculus VR all experienced an outage, although that one was far worse: the websites weren’t just not operating, they were sending back major server errors to users.
The 2021 outage also lasted for a very long time, as the sites remained offline for more than five hours before service slowly started to be restored. It was so serious that fixing the issue required the dispatch of a small team to Facebook’s data center in Santa Clara, California to manually reset the servers.
PetaPixel reached out to Meta regarding today’s outage but did not immediately hear back. That said, the company has acknowledged the problem and says that it is actively working on it. Andy Stone from Meta’s Communications department posted on X, formerly Twitter, that the company is attempting to fix the issue.
Update 3/5 @ 8:45 AM PT: Added acknowledgement from Meta.
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.
