Facebook, Instagram and Messenger suffered a "technical issue" that left users unable to login, send or receive messages, or check the latest posts shared by friends and family.
Parent company Meta, which is headed-up by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, lost 1.5% of its value as shares plummeted over news that a proportion of its 3.98 billion users worldwide were unable to access its social media platforms. That equates to $18 billion, roughly £14 billion converted.
"Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience," confirmed Meta spokesperson Andy Stone in a post on rival social network X, formerly Twitter.
X owner Elon Musk, who has previously challenged Mark Zuckerberg to a UFC fight, used the global outage to mock his billionaire nemesis.
Earlier today, Facebook users were left unable to log in to its website and mobile apps. Messenger users were left unable to send or receive messages or make audio or video calls. Lastly, Instagram users couldn't load new posts on their feed or watch Instagram Stories without being confronted with the error message "Couldn't Refresh Feed" flashing on-screen.
Parent company Meta quickly acknowledged the issues on its status dashboard, with almost all services marked as suffering from an "unknown" issue or "major disruptions". According to some reports, internal systems used by employees at Facebook, Messenger and Instagram were also been hit with the latest outage.
During the outage, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone posted on X, formerly known as Twitter: “We’re aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now.”
WhatsApp, which is also owned and operated by Zuckerberg's Meta, was not impacted by the issue.
It's still unclear whether Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram have been impacted by the same internal glitch — or whether separate errors are impacting all Meta services.
The first reports of trouble started around 3.20pm GMT. GB News was able to replicate both the Facebook login error and Instagram feed load glitch on Google Chrome web browser and iOS apps.
Independent website Down Detector, which monitors outages using mentions across public posts on social media, tracked over 150,000 reports from frustrated users in the UK. In the United States, there are over 500,000 reports of problems with the social network.
Instagram and Messenger are also experiencing outages, with a peak of 43,000 reports in the UK and 84,000 in the United States.
Facebook users who were unable to use the service have taken to X, formerly Twitter, to complain about the problems. As well as being a vital tool to message friends and family across the world, Facebook is critical for many small businesses in the UK.
What's Wrong With Facebook, Messenger, And Instagram?
An unknown outage plagued Facebook, the world's most popular social media website, and stopped the website from loading correctly. Instead of launching the News Feed when you navigate to facebook.com or launch the iOS or Android app, you were presented with the login screen.
However, typing the correct email and password will not launch the service as normal. Instead, you were thrown back to the login screen — as if you'd entered the wrong email and password combo.
Meanwhile, Instagram users are unable to refresh their feeds or Instagram Stories. Opening the photo-focused social network on your iPhone or Android device brings up an error message in the lower half of the screen, stating: "Couldn't Refresh Feed". However, users stay logged into Instagram.
Messenger, which is a separate app on iPhone and Android but can be used from the facebook.com website on a web browser on your laptop or desktop PC, is blocking users from sending or receiving new messages, audio or video calls because of the outage.
