Instagram and Facebook have abruptly gone offline in India and several other parts of the world. Users are complaining that they are not able to refresh their feeds on the official app and website. Stories, direct messages, and other features of both platforms are also not working.
The Meta-owned social media apps went offline at around 8:50 PM IST. As a sigh of relief, WhatsApp is working completely fine.
Andy Stone, Communications Director of Meta, posted on X (formerly Twitter) acknowledging the issue. He mentions that the company is working to fix the problem.
We're aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) March 5, 2024
Facebook users are also complaining that they have been automatically logged out of their accounts from the app and the website. Users are also unable to log in back to their accounts. Some users also expressed their concern on other social media platforms thinking that their accounts were hacked, but that’s not the case.
I thought my Facebook and Instagram got hacked for a second🤣
— Big E (@Big_E) March 5, 2024
Downdetector is also showing a huge surge in complaints related to Facebook and Instagram. Both platforms appear to be down globally.
We can expect the services to be restored at its earliest. A few weeks back, Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) had gone offline for a few hours. The platform came back online shortly.
UPDATE: 10:30 PM IST
Instagram and Facebook are now back online. Users can now make new posts and stories on the platforms. However, the reason for the outage has not been disclosed by Meta yet.
Earlier in the day, it was reported that some underwater internet cables were damaged in the Red Sea. Several internet service providers had to reroute their traffic from alternate sources between Asia and Europe. Although it’s not confirmed, it is speculated that this could be the reason for the downtime of Meta’s social media apps.
Apart from Facebook and Instagram, some users also reported downtimes in Google’s services like YouTube, Drive, Play Store, etc. YouTube even acknowledged the issue through a post on X (formerly Twitter). As of now, all services are working completely fine.
