• Saturday, July 27, 2024
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BusinessDay

Meta platforms’ Facebook and Instagram hit by outage, affecting thousands globally

Hundreds of thousands of users across the globe were unable to access Facebook and Instagram on Tuesday, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.

The disruptions, which began around 10:00 AM Eastern Time (4:00 PM WAT), affected both the platforms’ apps and websites. Downdetector reported over 300,000 outage incidents for Facebook and roughly 40,000 for Instagram.

“We’re aware that people are having trouble accessing our services,” acknowledged Meta spokesperson Andy Stone in a post on a rival social media platform. “We’re working on resolving this issue now.”

The outage extended to WhatsApp Business, with Meta’s status dashboard indicating issues with its application programming interface. Downdetector received approximately 200 reports of WhatsApp outages, which it gathers from various sources including user submissions.

The incident became a top trending topic on X, formerly known as Twitter, with users expressing their frustration and reporting being unexpectedly logged out of Meta’s platforms.

While the cause and duration of the outage remain unclear, Meta has assured users they are working towards a swift resolution.

Currently Instagram and Facebook are back online.