On Tuesday evening, millions of users across the world faced difficulties accessing Facebook and Instagram, the popular social media platforms owned by Meta. Users reported being logged out of their accounts and asked to change their passwords. Some users also experienced problems with loading their feeds and profiles.
Meta has not yet issued an official statement on the cause of the outage or when it will be resolved. However, some users speculated that it could be a result of a cyberattack or a glitch in the system. Some users also expressed their frustration and anxiety on other platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube, where they shared memes and jokes about the situation.
"Is Meta down or am I being hacked? 😂 my instagram isn’t loading and my facebook is also “session logged out\"", one user wrote on X². Another said, "I thought my facebook and instagram got hacked for a second." "Me coming to X to see if #INSTAGRAM is down once again," another user tweeted.
This is not the first time that Meta's services have faced a major outage. In October 2021, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger were down for nearly six hours, affecting billions of users and costing the company an estimated $60 million in lost revenue³. The company later blamed the outage on a faulty configuration change that disrupted its network infrastructure⁴.
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is the world's largest social media company, with over 3.5 billion monthly active users across its platforms. The company recently announced its rebranding and its vision to build the metaverse, a virtual environment where people can interact and create using immersive technologies.
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Source: Conversation with Bing, 3/5/2024
(1) Instagram, Facebook down? Users urged to 'log in again' | Mint. https://www.livemint.com/news/india/instagram-facebook-down-users-urged-to-log-in-again-netizens-reactions-11709653209040.html.
(2) Instagram, Facebook down globally, users urged to log in again. https://www.indiaherald.com/Breaking/Read/994685326/Instagram-Facebook-down-globally-users-urged-to-log-in-again-.
(3) Are Facebook and Instagram down? Users report issues Tuesday morning. https://wgntv.com/news/users-report-issues-accessing-facebook-instagram-more/.
(4) Instagram, Facebook down for users globally | Tech News. https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/instagram-facebook-down-for-users-globally-story-kVaokIxFZ15CSzVYyTwKgN.html.
