Panic on the Internet this Tuesday, March 5, 2024. For more than two hours, Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and other Meta services were inaccessible. Rest assured, it was just a global outage and not a hack.
Big heat on social networks this Tuesday, March 5! Around 4 p.m., it became impossible to access Meta’s social networks and instant messaging! Many users of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and Threads deprived of access to their favorite communication tools have rushed to the Internet in search of information, reporting connection problems on sites like DownDetector, which lists outages at major operators and major online services, but also on X – after all, it’s the social network for complaining. Even on the How It Works forum, posts from anxious Internet users are arriving from all sides! Everything started to return to normal after 5 p.m. But what happened?
Global outage at Meta: panic on board!
Tens of millions of users around the world have been logged out of their Facebook and Messenger accounts, unable to log back in. Worse still: a message indicates that “the password you entered is incorrect”. And impossible to reset it, because the code for double authentication does not arrive correctly, and the platform does not recognize the new identifiers either. On the Instagram side, users face a message “An error has occurred”. However, it appears that the problem only affects people logged into their account and that those operating offline have no problem. For their part, Threads and WhatsApp seem to be less affected, even if several reports have been made. To see how the situation is evolving, simply go to Meta disruptions page.
Don’t panic though! Contrary to what many believed, this was not an account hacking problem, but rather an outage that affected users around the world. OnAndy Stone, communications manager at Meta, confirmed the news: “We are aware that our users are having difficulty accessing our services. We are currently working on the matter”, he explains. However, the company did not provide further information on the causes of the incident.
The situation began to return to normal from 5 p.m., with Meta having visibly managed to repair the outage, as the company indicated on its service status page, obviously apologizing. And, as we have observed, access to the various services is well restored at the start of the evening, at 7 p.m.
Global outage at Meta: forced disconnection and loading error
The last major outage of Meta services dates back to May 2023 and concerned Messenger, which was unavailable for more than an hour. Meta then faced a giant outage, affecting all of its services, in October 2021, which lasted almost six hours (see our article).
It’s impossible to say if this outage will last that long, but things seem to be gradually returning to normal. For the moment, the only attitude is to wait patiently. No reason to worry if this type of failure happens again: it is not a hacking or account blocking, just a technical problem. Do not try to change your password at this time until things are back to normal.
As usual when Meta’s social networks go down, all users come to take refuge and share their distress on X (formerly Twitter). “We know why you’re here.”ironically published the official account of X. “If you can read this tweet, it’s because our servers are working”for his part commented Elon Musk, quickly forgetting the many setbacks encountered by the platform since its takeover. When the cat’s away the mice will play…