Facebook and Instagram down – Updates: Meta is the reason for the global outage today

Facebook and Instagram have been hit by a global outage that has left potentially millions of people unable to access their accounts.

Users found they were mysteriously logged out and couldn't log back in, or couldn't open the app at all.

According to tracking website Down Detector, the outage appears to be global.

Follow us for the latest information on the ongoing outage.

Important points

Read our full story on the outage here

16:31 , Andrew Griffin

You can read our outage save by clicking here.

Meta apologizes and thanks users

5:38 p.m , Andrew Griffin

In a post on his official account, Meta apologized to users and thanked them for their patience.

The outage was not a cyber attack

5:29 p.m , Andrew Griffin

#CyberAttack is trending on Twitter with many expressing panic that their accounts have been hacked.

However, there is no reason to believe that it was anything other than a normal (albeit very dramatic) technical issue caused by Meta itself. And the company has apparently hinted at this (see below).

Meta-speaker says the problem has been solved

17:22 , Andrew Griffin

Andy Stone, Meta spokesman, said the issue has been resolved.

“Recovery after disruptions”

17:21 , Andrew Griffin

The story goes on

Meta's business status page now displays “Disruption Recovery” for most of its services.

While the company doesn't run a similar page for its consumer products, you can imagine it says the same thing: Services appear to be recovering, even if they're not fully back up yet.

Services appear to be back online – but problems persist

16:56 , Andrew Griffin

Although many people are able to get online, problems persist. Some cannot get online or have other problems.

Tracking website Down Detector shows a decline in reports of problems – but again, they haven't completely disappeared.

And the meta status page for enterprise products is no longer yellow (like below), but some turn green to indicate “no known issues” and others turn red to indicate “major issues.”

Elon Musk continues to make fun of meta

16:32 , Andrew Griffin

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone posted that Meta was aware of the outage. Elon Musk seems to be making fun of him.

Services appear to be back online

16:27 , Andrew Griffin

Several people in different parts of the world report being able to log in again. It looks like Meta's products are coming back online.

(Some point out that they can get online using their phone but not their PC, for example. If you're still getting error messages or other problems and you're desperate to get online, it might be worth checking on your other devices.)

Meta's status page turns yellow

4:25 p.m , Andrew Griffin

I noticed earlier (here) that Meta updated its status page to reflect the outage. The whole thing has now turned yellow and the status of all Meta business products appears to be “unknown”.

Elon Musk makes fun of the failure

16:21 , Andrew Griffin

Elon Musk posted seemingly in response to the outage.

When Mr. Musk took over X/Twitter in late 2022, there was much speculation about whether the layoffs and other changes he made would lead to new failures.

The site is sometimes unavailable – particularly late last year, for example – but has mostly worked since then.

Meta probably wants an undo button

4:15 p.m , Andrew Griffin

Instagram's outage came just a day after it announced that people would be able to edit and undo their DMs. Meta launched it yesterday with a message that could be the exact words someone at headquarters is saying to themselves right now.

(Small errors have caused major problems in Meta before. In 2021, it was said that a major outage was the result of a single incorrect command that took the “backbone” offline.)

“Session logged out”

4:00 p.m , Andrew Griffin

You probably won't get hacked. On twitter /

However, this appears to be due to the outage and associated Facebook login issues.

Other platforms show problems with the down detector

3:59 p.m , Andrew Griffin

Some are noting that other major platforms – including YouTube and Gmail – appear to be having issues with website Down Detector tracking.

But that's probably because of the way Down Detector tracks outages, namely through automated systems that look for clues on Twitter/X and elsewhere. This sometimes means that if there is a very large outage, it can appear as if there are problems elsewhere too.

(This happened in the recent AT&T outage, when other carriers and platforms appeared to be having problems. But in reality, it was just people complaining about this outage – and noting that it meant they couldn't text people on other networks or access online services could access.)

Updates to meta business page to account for outages

15:52 , Andrew Griffin

Meta does not have an official status page for platforms like Facebook, Messenger or Instagram. But there is one for the companies that rely on it.

At first there were no problems with this. However, it has now been updated to reflect the outage.

It shows that there are problems in the “Meta Admin Center” used for the company's business tools. It also shows issues with its developer platform, including the Facebook login tool and its WhatsApp and marketing tools.

Hello and welcome…

3:47 p.m , Andrew Griffin

…to our live coverage of a major outage at Meta.