Meta’s applications, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, encountered significant disruptions on Wednesday afternoon, as reported by numerous users on DownDetector. Meta announced shortly after 5:30 p.m. EST that the issue was nearly resolved.
The surge in outage reports began around 12:30 p.m. EST, with over 100,000 Facebook users logging issues by 1:10 p.m. EST. Instagram and WhatsApp users also experienced similar problems, with tens of thousands of reports.
By 5:30 p.m., the number of Facebook outage reports had decreased to just over 1,200, while Instagram reports fell to about 1,900 from a peak of over 68,000. WhatsApp and Messenger also saw a significant drop in reported issues.
Some users attempting to access Facebook received an error message stating, “We’re working on getting this fixed as soon as we can.”
Meta’s status and outages page indicated that nearly all of its business tools and platforms, including Facebook Ads Manager, Messenger API for Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp Business API, were experiencing major disruptions as of just after 5:30 p.m. EST.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) shortly after 5:30 p.m., Meta expressed gratitude for users’ patience, stating, “We’re 99% of the way there – just doing some last checks. We apologize to those who’ve been affected by the outage.”