On Sunday, Facebook and Instagram were having widespread access issues across the United States, as thousands of users reported problems on both Meta-owned platforms.
By 9:11 p.m. ET, Facebook had over 17,000 reports on Downdetector, a site that uses user reports to track service disruptions. At around the same time, there were over 5,000 reports on Instagram.
The figures do not represent the total number of people affected. Downdetector is based on user-reported issues, meaning that the numbers can fluctuate based on the number of users reporting issues.
As the outage progressed, users reported problems with both platforms. In some cases, over half of the reported issues were not with the mobile apps, but with the websites.
Facebook and Instagram were not the only Meta services to see a rise in reports. Facebook Messenger has also seen a rise in problem reports, while WhatsApp has seen a smaller rise in outage reports.
The disruption was also evident beyond the U.S. borders. Downdetector reports for both Facebook and Instagram rose on Monday morning in Singapore, though it was a lot less than in the US.
Meta did not immediately release a statement to the public to explain the disruption or what caused the service issues.
The outage follows other disruptions of Meta platforms earlier this year. This is not the first time that the company’s issues have led to a surge in user reports from various countries, demonstrating the speed at which issues with its services can impact millions of users.
At this time, it’s not known what caused the latest Facebook and Instagram outage. The impact will be easier to assess once Meta gives an official update and outage reports resume to normal levels.
