Facebook, Facebook Messenger and Instagram went down starting around 10 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, according to Down Detector, a website that tracks user reports of telecommunication and internet disruptions.
More than 25,000 users in the U.S. reported that they were having issues with Facebook shortly after 10 a.m., compared to a base line of 17 such reports on an average day. By around 10:20 a.m., there were more than 538,000 reports of trouble with the website. Around 76 percent of the complaints were about logging in to the website; 17 percent of the problems reported were with the app and 8 percent with the website.
More than 91,000 people reported issues with Instagram around 10:30 a.m. and 62 percent of the problems reported had to do with the app, while 27 percent of reports were about the feed. More than 13,600 users reported issues with Facebook Messenger around that time, according to Down Detector and 61 percent of those users reported problems with logging in while 24 percent had issues with the app and 14 percent with sending messages.
Users also reported problems with Threads and WhatsApp, which are also owned by Meta.
The outages appeared to be affecting users globally, with problems reported in the United Kingdom, Germany, Argentina, Japan and elsewhere.
“We’re aware people are having trouble accessing our services,” Andy Stone, a spokesman for Meta, posted on X. “We are working on this now.”
Some users flocked to X to see if others were also experiencing trouble with those sites. One user told people not to panic if they were having trouble logging in.
The outage comes ahead of a deadline on Wednesday for Meta and other tech giants, including Apple and Google, to comply with the Digital Markets Act, a new European Union law that aims to increase competition in the digital economy. The law requires the companies to overhaul how some of their products work so that smaller competitors can access their users.
This is a developing story.
