Facebook and Instagram had massive outages on Friday
Facebook and Instagram users had to go without their favorite apps for a few hours on Friday.
Facebook had a massive outage on Friday | Image by PhoneArena
On Friday, social media apps and websites run by Meta suffered a huge outage. For example, at 9:13 AM EDT on Friday morning, 21 Facebook users complained to Downdetector.com about their inability to access Facebook. That number soared to 109,186 just 45 minutes later. At 12:13 AM EDT on Saturday morning, the number of complaints had dropped off to 76, which is still above the baseline of 12.
A majority of complaints about Facebook cited an issue with the app
As a result, Facebook's profile on the Downdetector site says "User reports show problems with Facebook." 56% of the complaints submitted by Facebook users to Downdetector were about the app. 27% could not log in to their accounts, and 9% had an issue with the website. Meta Vice President of Communications posted on X stating that "We’re aware people are currently having trouble accessing our services. We’re working on it."
Service to Facebook and Instagram was eventually restored
Service to Facebook was restored at 11:00 AM EDT and Instagram was back up and running at 12:30 PM EDT. Meta never revealed the exact cause of the outage other than to blame it on back-end infrastructure.
Over 109,000 Facebook users submitted complaints after the app and website went down Friday morning. | Image by Downdetector
Facebook users wrote in about their experiences
Plenty of Facebook users wrote to Downdetector with comments like this one from Molly in Michigan, who wrote, "Still can't seem to log into Facebook. Two-factor authentication won't work on the phone app. I'm able to use my PC just fine with zero problems. Seems to be the app being the issue." Theresa wrote on Downdetector, "Facebook is still down all day in Pennsylvania."
Which Meta app do you use the most?
The typical experience might belong to one Facebook user who wrote that out of nowhere he was suddenly logged out of his account and unable to sign back in.
Instagram users submitted fewer complaints to Downdetector than Facebook users
Downdetector received 35 complaints about Instagram at 9:14 AM EDT. That rose to 8,675 by 9:59 AM EDT, dropped to 5,485 by 10:29 AM EDT before moving back up to 7,532 by 10:44 AM EDT. At 12:44 AM EDT Saturday morning, 47 complaints were received from Instagram users.
49% of these complaints were about the app being down. 22% said that they could not log in to Instagram, and 21% said the issue prevented them from posting or publishing on the app or website. An Instagram user named "fayzaaanxau" wrote on Downdetector earlier on Friday that the app was crashing and wouldn't let him open it.
I almost let you get away without mentioning that Facebook Messenger was also affected by Friday's outage. From 0 complaints at 9:14 AM EDT, the app generated 15,403 submissions in just 30 minutes.
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