Most Services Restored to WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook After Brief Outage

WhatsApp is apparently back online, but some lingering issues are still being reported across other Meta services, engineering teams are investigating.

Logos of Facebook, Instagram, and mobile messaging service WhatsApp on the screens of a smartphone and a tablet in Toulouse, southwestern France, on Oct. 5, 2020. Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images

Don’t worry, it’s not just you. Normal Service has been restored to most Meta services on WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads after an outage and issues reported by users across the globe over the last few hours.

According to DownDetector, which monitors major website outages, users began reporting problems on the Meta-owned platforms at about 2 p.m. in the United States. WhatsApp was down worldwide, while Facebook, Instagram, and Threads users reported issues trying to view recent posts or create new ones.

Instagram logged thousands of complaints within the first half hour of the outage. Messaging service WhatsApp received by far the most complaints, clearing over 10,000 reports in roughly the same timeframe.

A post by an official WhatsApp account on social media platform X confirmed the outage news, saying: “We know some people are experiencing issues right now; we’re working on getting things back to 100% for everyone as quickly as possible.”

A few hours later, a follow-up post claimed all issues had been resolved: “And we’re back. Happy chatting.”

Official accounts connected to Facebook and Instagram didn’t post about the outages and have yet to address any of the issues.

According to Meta’s Status and Outages page, Ads Manager Status is still experiencing some problems, as is the case with Messenger API for Instagram Status, WhatsApp Business API Status, and the Messenger platform, which are all listed as having “major disruptions.”

All of the services with ongoing issues have status reports claiming that Meta is working hard to restore operational operations.

“Our engineering teams are investigating the issue. We will provide another update within 4 hours or sooner if additional information is available,” the status update says.

In a brief media statement, a spokesperson for Meta blamed major disruptions in platform ads transparency tools as the cause for the outages. Meta claims to have 3.19 billion daily active users across its family of apps, making any outages global reaching.

The Epoch Times has contacted Meta for further comment on the latest outages.

Outages An Ongoing Issue

Only last month Facebook, Instagram, and Threads were all offline in an outage that lasted about two hours. The blackout was during the height of the presidential primary election day, Super Tuesday, when the most significant number of states hold primary elections. WhatsApp was unaffected and kept working.

Meta communications head Andy Stone posted a statement to social media platform X at the time stating the cause was a “technical issue,” which was quickly resolved.

He said at the time, “We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”

It’s not uncommon for major social media platforms to go offline for hours at a time. In 2022, WhatsApp experienced a major outage that affected the communications app for two hours. A similar, more extensive outage in 2021 saw Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp go down for more than seven hours. At the time, Meta blamed the loss of IP routes and Domain Name System (DNS) servers.