Facebook & Instagram Restored After Users Report Widespread Outages

Meta says its Facebook and Instagram services have been restored, after more than half a million users reported widespread issues earlier in the day, with many saying they were booted out of the social media platforms and unable to log back in. 

DownDetector, a site that monitors internet service outages, on Tuesday said it received more than 500,000 reports of problems by U.S. Facebook users and more than 70,000 reported problems with Instagram as of about 10:30 a.m. ET. The most frequently reported problems were with logging into the Facebook app and issues with the Instagram app, according to DownDetector.

"Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services," a Meta Spokesman said in a statement on Tuesday. "We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience." 

Facebook users from across the globe reported that they were unable to log in to the service, ranging from Egypt to Oklahoma, according to DownDetector. Some people on social media expressed concern that their accounts had been hacked because they had been booted out of the service and were unable to get back in with their passwords.

"Meta platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Threads are currently experiencing outages related to login sessions in multiple countries; incident not related to country-level internet disruptions or filtering," according to NetBlocks, a global internet monitor, on X earlier Tuesday.

Meta Quest's artificial reality headsets were also signed out, according to tech site 9to5Mac.

The issue represented a "major outage incident," wrote NetBlocks director of research Isik Mater on X during the service interruption. "[E]ven the company's official status page is currently showing status 'Unknown' across the board."

Facebook has more than 2 billion daily active users worldwide, according to Meta.