Date:
December 12, 2024
Over 22,000 people reported issues while accessing Facebook, and 18,000 WhatsApp users reported struggling to use the application.
Meta, the parent company of Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Threads platforms, experienced a 10-hour global outage yesterday. All the platforms are back online, and Meta vaguely attributed the downtime to a ‘Technical Issue.’ All of Meta’s platforms faced unique downtime patterns, duration, and localized impact.
Instagram users faced issues surfing their feeds, reels, timelines, and explore pages. Thousands of Instagram users reported errors while uploading new stories, posts, and reels. Those who could successfully upload and publish their content saw significantly lower visibility.
22,000+ Facebook users reported issues accessing the platform on the website and mobile app. Issues began surfacing at around 12:50 PM ET. Soon after, Meta came forward, acknowledging the ongoing issue on the X platform. The same message was communicated by WhatsApp, Instagram, and Threads channels on the X platform.
The outage lasted for up to 10 hours, varying globally for users in the UK, parts of Europe, Asia, Australia, South America, and the US.
"And we're back, happy chatting!" said WhatsApp on the X platform. Instagram also updated its stories to explain the outage and reassure users that things have gone back to normal.
"Andddd we're back - sorry for the wait, and thanks for bearing with us," said Instagram.
While Meta also posted that its team is ‘99% of the way there’, some users continued to experience glitches using all the affected apps. As the entire Meta ecosystem was down, the probable issue could be attributed to an error while updating their servers or during a planned maintenance activity.
It is important to note that while this might not be a direct factor, it may have been a major contributor to an existing problem. Further details are awaited from Meta to confirm the actual reason for the 10+ hours-long global outage. This event also points at the heavy reliance on social media applications that caused a rapid surge in error reports across the world.
