Meta’s social networks and messaging services – Facebook, Instagram and Messenger – were affected this Tuesday, March 5, since 3:30 p.m. UT, by a series of outages worldwide. This is what the group recognized via one of its spokespersons, confirming the data displayed by the Downdetector site. The outage ended shortly after user reports began.
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“ Earlier today, a technical issue prevented users from accessing some of our services. We resolved this issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was affected, and we apologize for the inconvenience caused “, declared a spokesperson for the group, Andy Stone, on X (ex-Twitter), less than an hour after acknowledging the 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
Downdetector recorded up to 580,000 user reports for Facebook and up to 92,000 for Instagram, but the site showed a marked drop in reports less than an hour after the outages began. “ We are aware of an issue affecting Facebook login. Our engineering teams are actively seeking to resolve the issue as quickly as possible », indicated the Californian group on its site listing possible operating problems.
Nearly 4 billion people use at least one of the social media giant’s platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp – every month.
On X, Meta’s outage sparked a lot of ironic comments, particularly from the rival company itself. “ If you are reading this message, it is because our servers are working “, joked Elon Musk, the owner of X.
If you’re reading this post, it’s because our servers are working
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 5, 2024
“ We know why you’re all here right now », For its part, wrote the account of the X platform.
Platforms are regularly affected by momentary outages: WhatsApp, the very popular messaging service bought by Facebook in 2014 for more than 19 billion dollars, for example suffered a significant interruption in October 2022. And in October 2021, the group’s four services experienced an unprecedented outage: Downdetector then recorded more than 5.6 million reports from around the world in one hour.