In brief
On Wednesday evening, Meta's platforms, including Facebook, faced significant outages with thousands reporting issues worldwide.
Users of WhatsApp and Instagram can breathe a sigh of relief as both platforms have successfully returned online following a notable global outage that took place on Wednesday evening. Meta, the tech giant behind these popular apps, acknowledged the disruption after over 22,000 Facebook users and more than 18,000 WhatsApp users reported problems on Downdetector. Issues were widespread, affecting users in the UK, Europe, Asia, Australia, South America, and the US. Meta took to X, stating, "Thanks for bearing with us! We're 99% of the way there - just doing some last checks. We apologize to those who've been affected by the outage." The outages began around 6 PM GMT, causing a range of problems from complete app inaccessibility to faulty feeds not refreshing. WhatsApp reassured users with the message, "We're aware of some issues accessing WhatsApp. We're actively working on a solution and starting to see a return to normal for most people." Meta's platforms have been used by over three billion active monthly users, marking this incident as one of the more significant disruptions, reminiscent of the major outage in 2021.
