Nearly all of Facebook owner Meta‘s full suite of social media sites and apps experienced reports of outages today, with New York and Los Angeles Instagram users among the hardest hit.
According to DownDetector, a website which monitors such outages, reports of problems with the platform first began to surface at about 18:30 GMT (14:30 ET).
All told, over ten thousand reports of outages have come in from users across the continental United States.
Thousands of reported WhatsApp outages were also recorded internationally, in countries as far-flung as Mexico, Colombia, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
Users mostly said they were unable to send messages, but others reported being unable to receive them. Some users even declared that they could not access the apps at all.
Users of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all flocked to Twitter to report today’s outage
User reports of outages across Meta’s sites first emerged at approximately 14:30 ET across the United States. While the scope of the outages varied by country, it effected tens of thousands of social media users who logged on to Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp in the US
Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger went down today, with users worldwide complaining of issues. Instagram users reported facing significant trouble in New York; Los Angeles; and curiously Wichita, Kansas. This story is developing and will be updated
A heat map of complaints within the past hour, compiled by DownDetector, shows clusters of Instagram outages located across New York; Los Angeles; and curiously Wichita, Kansas
Facebook’s parent company Meta has not revealed a cause for the problem, but the issue appears to be improving for Facebook and WhatsApp slightly.
A heat map of user complaints within the past hour, as compiled by DownDetector, showed clusters of reported Instagram outages, in particular, located across New York; Los Angeles; and curiously Wichita, Kansas.
One user, digital marketing strategist Jason “Stix” Buckley, reported on Twitter that ‘photo galleries have poofed’ on Facebook, suggesting that precious memories uploaded by users to the platform may have vanished during the outage.
Today’s Meta outages come four months after Facebook Messenger suffered similar outages this past February.
This story is developing and will be updated as further information surfaces.
