In this illustrated photo, the Facebook logo is displayed on a smartphone. (Mateusz Slodkowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket, Getty Images)
As of Thursday afternoon, there were more than 300,000 outages on Facebook and nearly 50,000 outages on Instagram, according to Reuters, reported on Downdetector.
This included approximately 10,000 crash reports from South Africa.
Additionally, 200 outages were reported on WhatsApp, a messaging service owned by Meta like Facebook and Instagram.
According to Reuters, the social media platform began experiencing outages around 10 a.m. Eastern time (5 p.m. Saturday).
Users posting on Downdetector in South Africa reported login issues and other error messages.
In a post on unaffected X (formerly Twitter), Meta spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed the outage, but did not confirm or deny user speculation about a potential security breach.
“We understand that people are having issues accessing our services, and we are currently working on this issue,” Stone said.
We recognize that people have problems accessing our services. I'm currently working on this.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) March 5, 2024
Stone's post drew mixed reactions from users, with many amused that Meta had to use a competitor's platform to post a statement.
META uses X to inform users that Facebook and Instagram are down.
— ????? (@Shunyaa00) March 5, 2024
More to come.
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