Facebook and Instagram Down: Meta Social Platforms Experiencing Outages

Meta has not commented publicly on the widespread outages so far.

By Michael Hein

Facebook, Instagram and Threads all had widespread technical problems on Tuesday that had users panicking. The two social media sites owned by Meta were not only inaccessible to users, but were randomly logging them out of their accounts on some devices. It's unclear what is causing these issues or when they might be fixed.

At the time of this writing, the website DownDector.com has logged outages for nearly half a million Facebook users on Tuesday morning and nearly three-quarters of a million Instagram users. Since DownDetector relies on user submissions, it's unclear how widespread these issues really are, and there's no telling if they've peaked yet or not. Meta's Twitter-like spinoff of Instagram, Threads, is also seeing outages according to a report by Variety. So far, reps for the company have not commented publicly.

With no explanation from Meta, users could only speculate about these issues on other social media sites like X. Some wondered if Meta was experiencing a cyberattack or if its servers were failing catastrophically, though most simply made jokes about their dependence on social media. Most seemed to assume that Meta's apps would recover quickly since temporary outages are nothing new.

Of course, some worried users related these issues to the service outages from major internet and cell service providers in recent weeks. On Thursday, Feb. 22, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile saw huge service interruptions that impacted tens of thousands of customers around the country, at least. AT&T explained that the outage was caused by "the application and execution of an incorrect process used while working to expand our network, not a cyber attack."

So far Meta has not explained the interruptions at Facebook, Instagram and Threads on Tuesday, but the services are still not working according to many users on other sites. Check back for more updates when they are available.

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