Facebook and Instagram, Meta’s two star social networks, are causing problems this afternoon for their users, who have reported difficulties accessing these platforms. According to the DownDetector website, specialized in detecting mishaps in internet-connected services in real time, users cannot access the platforms. The Facebook Messenger service also had problems. The aforementioned Meta applications have recorded reports of poor service since 4:00 p.m. Spanish peninsular time. The peak of incidents was recorded half an hour later, and an hour later the situation began to normalize.
The problems that Facebook users have reported are, essentially, failures to log in. Among Instagram users, these types of complaints have also accounted for the majority. Facebook Messenger, an application little used in Spain, but very popular in the US, where it rivals WhatsApp as the most used instant messaging channel, has also had problems. Users were also unable to access Threads, Meta’s alternative to X (formerly Twitter). Elon Musk, head of X, took the opportunity to mock his business rivals con un par de tuits.
In one of them he made fun of Andy Stone, spokesperson for Meta, who recognized in X: “We are aware that people have problems accessing our services. “We are working on this now.” Meta’s business services status page reported a number of issues, including “major outages” in the group admin center, Facebook login, or the WhatsApp business service, another company app that directed by Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook is, with more than 3 billion active users, the most popular social network in the world. Instagram, for its part, accumulates 2,000 million, the same as WhatsApp, also from Meta. Facebook Messenger attracts 900 million users.
At 6:19 p.m. Spanish peninsular time, Stone reported that “a technical problem caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services.” He added: “We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone affected and apologize for any inconvenience.”
However, the fall of these services has coincided with reports of problems (less numerous) on other global platforms, such as Google, Gmail or YouTube, which could be due to a more general infrastructure problem. This latest video website, owned by Alphabet, has recognized in X which was trying to solve access problems for some users. He New York Times speculates that these problems coincide with the Thursday deadline for technology giants such as Meta, Apple and Google to comply with the new European Union regulations, the Digital Markets Law, which requires them to adapt their products.