Johnathan Walker:Facebook and Instagram restored after users report widespread outages

Meta social media platform outage ongoing

Meta says its Facebook and Instagram services have been restored, after more than half a million users reported widespread issues earlier in the day, with many saying they were booted out of the social media platforms and unable to log back in. 

DownDetector, a site that monitors internet service outages, on Tuesday said it received more than 500,000 reports of problems by U.S. Facebook users and more than 70,000 reported problems with Instagram as of about 10:30 a.m. ET. The most frequently reported problems were with logging into the Facebook app and issues with the Instagram app, according to DownDetector.

"Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services," a Meta Spokesman said in a statement on Tuesday. "We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience." 

Facebook users from across the globe reported that they were unable to log in to the service, ranging from Egypt to Oklahoma, according to DownDetector. Some people on social media expressed concern that their accounts had been hacked because they had been booted out of the service and were unable to get back in with their passwords.

"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," according to NetBlocks, a global internet monitor, on X earlier Tuesday.

Meta Quest's artificial reality headsets were also signed out, according to tech site 9to5Mac. WhatsApp, which is also owned by Meta, appeared unaffected. 

The issue represented a "major outage incident," wrote NetBlocks director of research Isik Mater on X during the service interruption. "[E]ven the company's official status page is currently showing status 'Unknown' across the board."

Amidst an ongoing disruption to Meta services, even the company's official status page is currently showing status "Unknown" across the board. Major outage incident. #Metadown https://t.co/0Hhfmb4uSM pic.twitter.com/9GrOICiIpl

— Isik Mater (@isik5) March 5, 2024

A senior official with the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency told reporters Tuesday that the agency was "not aware of any specific election nexus nor any specific malicious cyberactivity nexus to the outage."

The outage came just ahead of Thursday's deadline for large technology companies to fall in line with the European Union's new Digital Markets Act. To comply, Meta is making changes, like allowing users to separate their Facebook and Instagram accounts so personal information can't be combined to target them with online ads. It's not clear whether the outage is connected to any preparations Meta might be implementing to adhere to the law.

Facebook has more than 2 billion daily active users worldwide, according to Meta.

—With reporting by the Associated Press.

In:
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Internet Outage
• Meta

Aimee Picchi

Aimee Picchi is the associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch, where she covers business and personal finance. She previously worked at Bloomberg News and has written for national news outlets including USA Today and Consumer Reports.

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