Once again, Facebook and Instagram have experienced a widespread outage affecting thousands of users globally, in what seems to be a recurring issue occurring every few months.
For the past hour, the internet has been thrown into turmoil as three major social media platforms have been inaccessible for many users.
DownDetector reported that over 23,000 individuals encountered problems with Facebook around 1pm ET on Wednesday, December 11.
Some users have encountered an error message stating, ‘We’re working on getting this fixed as soon as we can’ when attempting to access Meta’s applications.
Meta issued a statement saying: “We’re aware that a technical issue is impacting some users’ ability to access our apps. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and apologize for any inconvenience.”
The last significant disruption of these platforms occurred in March, with users being unable to access Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp.
At the time, a company representative stated: “We are aware of an issue impacting Facebook Login. Our engineering teams are actively looking to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.”
Andy Stone, a communications professional at Meta, acknowledged on Twitter that Meta’s services were experiencing downtime.
He commented: “We’re aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now.”
As anticipated, Musk humorously took to Twitter, saying: “If you’re reading this post, it’s because our servers are working.”
Meta later updated that it was ‘recovering from an earlier outage impacting Facebook Login, and services are in the process of being restored’.
During the current outage, many users have migrated to Twitter, one of the few operational social media platforms, to check if it’s their internet issue or if Meta’s services are genuinely down.
“Me running to Twitter to see if everyone else’s Facebook is down or if it’s my internet,” one user noted.
Another added: “Facebook is down, so naturally, everyone’s flocking to Twitter to confirm it’s not just them. Classic.”
“My Facebook messenger going down and I suddenly feel like I’m on an island all alone,” remarked a third.
A fourth humorously observed: “It’s always Instagram & Facebook down but never Microsoft Teams down.”
From personal experience, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are currently experiencing intermittent service.
The exact timing for when the servers will be fully restored remains uncertain.