Meta Platforms Suffers Major Outage, Disrupting Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp
A Global Outage
A significant service disruption has affected several of Meta Platforms’ popular apps, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Users worldwide reported difficulties accessing these platforms on Tuesday, December 11, 2024. The outage began around 12:36 PM EST and impacted millions of users.
The Extent of the Disruption
According to DownDetector, a real-time service monitoring website, Facebook was the most severely affected platform, with a peak of over 107,000 outage reports. Instagram and WhatsApp also experienced substantial disruptions, with peak reports exceeding 68,000 and 9,300, respectively.
Meta Acknowledges the Issue
Meta has confirmed the outage and is actively working to restore normal service. The company issued a statement on X, apologizing for the inconvenience and assuring users that they are doing everything possible to resolve the issue.
Potential Cause and Recovery
While the exact cause of the outage remains unknown, network intelligence firm Cisco ThousandEyes has suggested that internal server errors and timeouts within Meta’s backend services may be the culprit.
As of late Tuesday evening, the severity of the outage appears to be decreasing, with reports on DownDetector declining significantly. However, some users may still experience intermittent issues.
Stay Tuned for Updates
We will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates as more information becomes available.