In brief
Meta's popular apps, including WhatsApp and Instagram, experienced significant service disruptions on Wednesday, leaving users without access for several hours. The issues have now been resolved, with Meta confirming that services are returning to normal.
Meta Platforms, Inc. faced a significant challenge on Wednesday as a mass global outage impacted its widely used applications, including WhatsApp and Instagram. Following numerous reports from users around the world, both platforms have since been restored as of late Wednesday.The outage affected a wide range of regions, including the UK, Europe, Asia, Australia, South America, and the US. As reported by Downdetector, over 22,000 users experienced difficulties with Facebook, while WhatsApp saw more than 18,000 users struggling to connect. Meta took to social media platform X to communicate with users, providing updates and apologies for the disruption.Meta acknowledged the issue with a statement, saying, "Thanks for bearing with us! We're 99% of the way there - just doing some last checks. We apologize to those who've been affected by the outage." The disruptions began around 18:00 GMT and were characterized by a variety of problems, including complete inaccessibility to the applications and issues with refreshing feeds.WhatsApp provided reassurance, stating, "We're aware of some issues accessing WhatsApp. We're actively working on a solution and starting to see a return to normal for most people." Following the resolution of these issues, both WhatsApp and Instagram confirmed their return to functionality, with messages thanking users for their patience.This incident comes on the heels of Meta's history of outages, most notably a major disruption in 2021 that left users without access to its services for nearly six hours. As Meta's platforms continue to grow in popularity, with Facebook boasting over three billion active monthly users, such outages draw considerable attention from the user base and media alike.
