[UPDATED] CEBU CITY, Philippines — A massive outage locked out users of Meta-owned platforms Facebook and Instagram, including Facebook Messenger and Threads, from their accounts on Tuesday evening, March 5.
The outage lasted over an hour, with users reportedly gaining access to their accounts at 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning, March 6.
“Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services,” Meta spokesman Andy Stone said in a post on X.
“We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience,” he added.
According to the DownDetector website, reports that Facebook was down peaked at around 500,000 at 1530 GMT. Instagram peaked at about 70,000 reports at the same time.
Facebook down? Users reported being logged out of Facebook as of 11:00 p.m., according to tracking website DownDetector
Threads, the rival to Twitter that was launched in 2023, also suffered reports of outages, though WhatsApp, Meta’s messaging service, seemed spared.
Facebook suffered a similar outage in October 2021, which was attributed to technical issues, not a security hack as originally feared.
At the height of the incident on Tuesday, Facebook’s status page, intended for advertisers, said the site was suffering “major disruptions” and that “engineering teams are actively looking to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.”
Users trying to access Facebook were asked to log in but were unable to sign in using the correct password.
On Instagram, mobile users were seeing their feeds not refreshed.
Reports said that Meta’s virtual reality headsets were also suffering problems, with the device’s Horizon World platform not allowing users to sign in.
Facebook is the world’s largest social media platform, with three billion active monthly users.
Instagram has about 1.35 billion users, according to the latest data.
READ: 7 steps to stronger, more secure passwords
Facebook Down trends on Twitter
Meanwhile, X, formerly Twitter, saw a spike in online activity as users were locked out of the Meta sites.
The outage was among the top trending topics on X, formerly Twitter, with several users saying they had suddenly been logged out of the Meta-owned social media platforms.
“Testing, testing… affirmative, everything is functioning smoothly here,” wrote X CEO Linda Yaccarino, taking a dig at its rival.
JUST IN: We have received reports of people having trouble accessing their Facebook and Messenger accounts. Let us know! #CDNDigital pic.twitter.com/3OKw4UoZIc
— CDN Digital (@cebudailynews) March 5, 2024
On rival platform Twitter, the keywords “Meta,” “Facebook and Messenger” and “Instagram down” were trending as of 11:30 p.m. (Manila time).
Keywords related to the Meta outage trended on Twitter as of 11:30 p.m. | screenshot from Twitter
‘Akala ko na-hack ako’
Ka-Siloys also took to Twitter to share their experiences with the outage, with some thinking they were hacked at first. Meanwhile, others poked fun at the situation, saying the outage disrupted their plans.
Meta looking into global Facebook, Instagram outage
Meta on Tuesday said it was looking into widespread outages of its Facebook, Instagram and Threads platforms after users were locked out of their accounts around the world.
“We’re aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now,” Meta spokesman Andy Stone said in a post on X.
US media focused on the fact that the outage took place on Super Tuesday, the day that millions of people were voting in primaries in 15 states and one territory. (with reports from AFP, Reuters)
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