Instagram And Facebook Return To Operation After Outage; Meta Apologizes For “Inconvenience” – Update

UPDATED with resolution of outage. Instagram and Facebook returned to full operation mid-day Tuesday following a 2-hour outage.

Andy Stone, a spokesman for parent company Meta Platforms, issued an update and an apology on X, formerly Twitter. “Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services,” he wrote. “We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”

The major social platforms have been used to get out the vote for today’s Super Tuesday presidential primaries in 15 states, including California.

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Instagram and Facebook suffered apparently widespread outages Tuesday morning, with users venting frustration on other social media platforms.

Users reported being kicked out of Facebook and unable to log back in. Visitors to Instagram were greeted by an error message reading, “Something went wrong. There’s an issue and the page could not be loaded.”

According to the website DownDetector, which tracks tech outages, the issues began in the 10 a.m. hour Eastern Time. The situation remained unresolved an hour later.

The outage unfolded at the start of Super Tuesday, when millions of voters were poised to cast ballots in presidential primaries in 15 states, including California. Major social media figures like Taylor Swift had been using Instagram in recent days to urge followers to vote.

Meta Platforms owns Facebook and Instagram as well as WhatsApp, which also was reported to be experiencing trouble. Threads and Facebook Messenger were also flashing red on the DownDetector dashboard.

On X, formerly Twitter, many Facebook and Instagram account holders have been flooding the platform with frustrated posts. Meta spokesman Andy Stone posted on X, “We’re aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now.”

Meta reported last month that its “family of apps” – Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger –ended 2023 with 3.98 billion monthly active users, up 6% from 2022. While social media and its advertising business remain foundational for Meta, the company changed its name to reflect a new long-term strategic focus on the metaverse. Momentum in Meta’s business in 2023, following significant cost reductions, helped to nearly double Meta’s stock price last year and it has risen more than 40% in 2024 to date.

In 2021, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were down for more than six hours. Their parent company blamed “configuration changes on backbone routers.”