Multiple social platforms owned under the social media conglomerate Meta experienced a “technical issue” Tuesday morning.
Apps such as Instagram, Facebook, and Threads, Meta’s competitor to X (Twitter), were unable to load content and/or forcefully logged certain users out of their accounts, displaying written “crash” messages and alleging that certain users passwords were not correct for their log-in information. Hundreds of thousands of users reported issues, with more than 570,000 Facebook users and 90,000 Instagram users affected by 10:30a EST, according to The Washington Post.
Metrics concerning the affected user base were collected using the service Downdetector, an online website wherein individuals can manually search for the service they are experiencing issues with, as well as browse the status of other companies, brands, and services.
Andy Stone, the communications director and spokesperson for Meta, posted on X at 10:52a EST to reassure the public regarding the issue.
“We’re aware people are having trouble accessing our services,” he stated. “We are working on this now.”
Just over an hour later, Stone confirmed the resolution of the issue through a repost of his original comment on the platform.
“Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services,” he stated. “We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”
Online communities quickly swarmed the remaining functional social media platforms, confirming suspicions of a crash, trading humor and memes, and theorizing as to what could have caused the outage.
Elon Musk, the owner of X, uploaded his own contribution to the discussion, stating that “If you’re reading this post, it means our servers are working” at 11:12a EST. Musk followed up quickly with a meme portraying the animated penguins from the film franchise “Madagascar”, overlaid with the logos for Instagram, Facebook and Threads, saluting to another penguin bearing the X logo, accompanied by a screengrab of Stone’s first statement regarding the outage.
Meta has not yet confirmed or commented on the cause of the “technical issue”.
One of the largest online companies and communication leaders globally, Meta hosts more than 3.98 billion users across its applications each month, the company reported in February.
