Facebook and Instagram Outage: Users Experience Access Issues

Early Sunday morning, numerous Facebook users encountered difficulties logging into the social media platform. A message indicated that accounts were ‘temporarily unavailable.’ According to Downdetector, a live outage tracker, problems began at approximately 3:25 a.m. ET, with thousands in the U.S. affected. Instagram users also reported similar access issues around the same time.

Both platforms, owned by Meta, showed a message on Facebook stating: ‘Your account is currently unavailable due to a site issue. We expect this to be resolved shortly. Please try again in a few minutes.’ Problems extended to Canada, Mexico, India, the UK, and other parts of Europe.

Analysis shows a pattern, with reports indicating Facebook functionality on mobile devices but not on desktop browsers. Downdetector data recorded that 63% of issues related to the website, 20% involved mobile devices, and 10% concerned the app.

Reddit users shared their experiences. One reported an initial error message stating ‘You’ve been temporarily banned’ before seeing a generic error page. Another mentioned the error message changed to being temporarily blocked for ‘going too fast and overusing,’ while refreshing the page continuously.

Issues extended to Instagram, impacting 44% of users’ feeds or timelines, 40% of the app, and 12% of posting or publishing content according to reports. Users found difficulties loading feeds, sending messages, and viewing stories, with some facing error messages and server connection barriers.

WhatsApp faced problems too, though less widespread than Facebook. Downdetector showed 44% of issues related to messaging, 39% involved the app, and 8% concerned login problems.

Meta has seen prior disruptions, such as a global outage in October 2021 affecting Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger for nearly six hours. This was linked to a faulty network configuration change. More recently, a March 2024 outage left numerous users unable to access accounts for more than two hours. Meta attributed this to a technical issue without extensive details.

Current issues mainly involve Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Threads and other Meta platforms like Meta Quest have not reported similar disruptions.

Christine Harrison, a digital designer, stated analysts suspect a glitch during a major update to Facebook’s systems might be the cause. An analyst confirmed a planned update notification earlier. If a software bug or configuration error occurred, it might explain users’ access problems, although Meta has not confirmed this.

Newsweek reached out to Meta via email regarding awareness of the issues, identification of the cause, and the estimated resolution timeframe.