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Facebook and Instagram outage resolved after major disruption at Meta

Facebook was the most impacted, with over 600,000 users reporting issues accessing their accounts.
Facebook and Instagram apps on a phone
Posted at 11:27 AM, Mar 05, 2024

The outage affecting Meta’s platforms worldwide has been resolved after a major disruption. 

The outage impacted the app and website versions of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Threads.

Around 10:30 a.m. ET, more than 600,000 Facebook users reported issues accessing their accounts, according to Downdetector, which monitors online outages. Over 95,000 users experienced similar issues with Instagram at that time. 

At 10:52 a.m., Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the company was working to fix the issues. 

"We're aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now," Stone said on X. 

About an hour and a half later, Stone said the problems were resolved. 

"Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services," Stone posted on X. "We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience."

On X, the phrases "Facebook and Instagram" and #FacebookDown were trending Tuesday morning.

On Facebook, many users said they had been logged out of their accounts and couldn’t log back in. On Instagram, some users reported that their feed was not refreshing. Others on Threads were met with an error screen.

Users said they initially feared their accounts were hacked.

"FB and IG are down. I just freaked out thinking my accounts were hacked," said Kelly Bazzle on X.

Meta did not immediately return Scripps News' request for comment.