Meta’s Platforms Experience Widespread Outage: WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram Down

A significant outage swept across Meta’s platforms on Wednesday, causing disruptions to WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram services, leaving users unable to access these popular social media platforms temporarily.

Thousands of users encountered difficulties accessing the three platforms late in the day, prompting a flurry of complaints on alternative social media channels as individuals sought to voice their frustrations.

Although Meta’s status site later indicated that most of the issues had been resolved, the company has refrained from providing official commentary on the incident thus far.

The disruptions commenced around 18:00 GMT (14:00 EST) on Wednesday, triggering a surge in reports of issues from users worldwide. The UK-based website Downdetector, which monitors website performance, recorded approximately 82,000 issues with WhatsApp at 18:25 GMT, but within an hour, the problem appeared to have been largely rectified.

Similarly, Instagram users reported around 3,700 outages at 18:20 GMT, with disruptions persisting for several hours. Concurrently, Facebook users encountered issues, with approximately 1,840 outages reported at 18:23 GMT.

The technical glitch extended beyond the UK, with Reuters reporting that approximately 5,000 users in the United States experienced issues with Instagram, while at its peak, around 24,000 WhatsApp users also encountered problems.

Responding to the widespread disruption, WhatsApp acknowledged the issue on X, formerly Twitter, stating, “We know some people are experiencing issues right now; we’re working on getting things back to 100% for everyone as quickly as possible.”

Downdetector data revealed that nearly 3,500 users in India and over 7,000 in Brazil also encountered difficulties accessing the platform during the outage period.

This outage comes on the heels of a similar incident in March, where hundreds of thousands of Facebook and Instagram users worldwide were affected for over two hours due to a technical glitch.

Meta, which boasts approximately 3.19 billion daily active users across its suite of apps, including Threads, faces mounting scrutiny over the reliability of its platforms amid recurring technical disruptions.