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Facebook, Instagram, and Threads back up following widespread Meta outage

Updated Mar 5, 2024, 1:11pm EST
techNorth America
Photo illustration by Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto
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The News

Meta’s platforms are now running smoothly after an unusual and widespread outage Tuesday, which saw the company’s top social media sites — Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and Threads — all failing to load for some users.

Tuesday’s interruption affected more than 570,000 Facebook users and more than 90,000 Instagram users by 10:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, according to data from outage tracker Downdetector, reported by The Washington Post.

The outage appeared to be improving by early afternoon, although Downdetector showed thousands of reports from users still unable to access their accounts or struggling to load webpages. The reports peaked around 11 a.m EST.

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Instagram users were unable to refresh their feeds, while some people are logged out of Facebook accounts and unable to get back in, The Verge reported.

“We’re aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now,” Meta communications head Andy Stone said on X.

In 2021, a similar crash that lasted six hours prompted an apology from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The company pointed to “configuration changes on the backbone routers,” but did not explain exactly what caused the glitch.

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