Facebook, Instagram, Threads and Messenger – platforms operated by Meta – were offline for thousands of users in India and several other countries, according to outage tracking website Downdetector. After a brief outage, services have been restored.
Users were unable to load apps, deliver messages, and refresh their search feeds on Facebook and Instagram. There were more than 300,000 reports of outages on Facebook, while there were more than 20,000 reports on Instagram, according to the website. Several users have been logged out of their Facebook accounts and can no longer log in due to the outage.
“We are aware that people are having issues accessing our services. We are working on this now,” said Meta spokesperson Andy Stone.
Downdetector detects outages by collecting status reports from various sources, including user-submitted errors on the platform. The outage could have affected a larger number of users. The website showed that outages occurred not only in India, but also in several other countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Brazil.
WhatsApp, also owned by Meta, has not yet reported any disruptions. The newly launched X-rival Threads is also offline. Within minutes of the outage, people moved to X and #Instagramdown, owned by Elon Musk. Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg are trending on the social media platform, with users sharing memes about the global server problem.
As users jumped to
we know why you are all here
—X (@X) March 5, 2024
Elon Musk, the owner of
If you are reading this message, it is because our servers are working
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 5, 2024
Last year, a major outage was reported on Meta platforms, including WhatsApp, in July. Services were restored later in the day. The July outage came weeks after a similar problem was reported in June.