Quick Look
- Meta's apps including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp experienced a widespread outage starting around 9 AM ET.
- Services began to recover by early afternoon, though some disruptions remained.
AI-generated summary
Why It Matters
Meta's social media and messaging applications experienced significant disruptions, preventing users from accessing services.
Meta's apps seem to be experiencing issues. Andy Stone, the company's Vice President of Communications wrote on X, "we're aware people are currently having trouble accessing our services. We're working on it." Reports began spiking on DownDetector a little after 9am ET for Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Update: As of 12:38PM ET, some people on the Engadget team have seen their Facebook and Instagram feeds return. Andy Stone posted on X that "We're coming back, though it may take a bit of time for everything to be fully back to normal." However, our senior reporter Karissa Bell notes that the status page is still showing a lot of red, meaning the outage remains fairly widespread.
Meta Status, which tracks outages across Meta's services, is reporting "high disruptions" for a number of services under the company's umbrella. Meta has issued an update on the website which says its engineers are working on the issue and that it will provide an update within an hour or sooner if more information becomes available.
At 11am ET, Downdetector's reported problems had peaked at just over 20,000. Some users have reported being automatically logged out of Facebook; Instagram seems to have remained up for the majority of users but is displaying an outdated feed for many.
What to Watch
AI outlook — possibilities, not facts
Full restoration of Meta services.
Likely · Within days
Open Questions
- What caused the widespread outage?
- Will there be further disruptions?
