Meta's Facebook and Instagram Hit by Major Outages

Meta platforms Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Threads experienced widespread outages, affecting users globally across various countries including the UK, parts of Europe, China, Australia, and Mexico. The technical issues led to hundreds of thousands of users being unable to access their accounts, with Downdetector.com logging over 450,000 outage reports for Facebook and over 73,000 for Instagram during the morning hours. The incident coincided with Super Tuesday, a significant day for the U.S. elections, potentially impacting political campaign activities.

Meta has acknowledged the technical difficulties, although the company has yet to specify the root cause of the service disruptions. Internal systems at Meta reportedly showed 'major disruptions' during the outage period. This incident has had a noticeable effect on Meta's stock price and has drawn widespread attention on social media platforms, including X (formerly known as Twitter). Meta's communication director, Andy Stone, confirmed the company's awareness of the issue and that they were working to resolve it. The company's service dashboard, intended to provide updates on the status of its products, was not loading during the outage. Internet traffic monitoring experts from Kentik and NetBlocks observed a significant drop in traffic to the affected platforms, indicating the extent of the issue. There were also reports of problems with WhatsApp and Google, although it remains unclear if these were connected to the Meta outages.