Meta’s Facebook and Instagram experience outages, users report access issues

Facebook and Instagram suffered a widespread outage on Sunday, with users worldwide reporting trouble accessing the apps and websites.

Reuters and outage-tracking service Downdetector logged sharp spikes in complaints, including in the United States, Pakistan and Singapore.

Meta had not confirmed the cause of the disruption at the time of reporting.

Why are Facebook and Instagram down today?

The exact cause of the Facebook and Instagram outage has not been confirmed. Meta did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment from Reuters. Downdetector recorded reports from users in the US, Pakistan and Singapore, with Facebook users mainly citing website access problems and Instagram users reporting app failures.

How many users reported the Facebook outage?

Downdetector said 4,808 reports had been filed by Facebook users in the United States as of 0746 GMT. Of those, 63% said they were experiencing problems accessing the website. In the same window, US Facebook outage reports peaked at 4,587 at 12:58 p.m. before falling to 3,161 by 1:28 p.m.

Was Instagram affected by the outage too?

Instagram was also hit hard, with 2,829 reports filed by users in the United States as of 0818 GMT. That figure kept climbing, reaching 4,308 reports by 1:50 p.m. and still rising at the time of the update. Reuters also found that access to Facebook and Instagram was intermittent in Singapore.

Did Pakistani users experience the Facebook and Instagram outage?

Downdetector data showed Pakistani users began reporting Facebook issues at 12:26 p.m. Reports peaked at 191 at 1:29 p.m. before declining to 174 by 1:44 p.m. Instagram users in Pakistan followed a similar pattern, with reports rising sharply from 12:30 p.m., peaking at 173 at 1:29 p.m. and easing to 161 by 1:44 p.m.

Has Meta had outages before this one?

The latest disruption follows a string of earlier problems on Meta's platforms. Last month, thousands of users reported issues across the company's services, prompting a statement from Meta spokesperson Andy Stone. In March 2024, a widespread outage left users unable to access Facebook, Instagram and Threads for several hours.