Facebook outage disrupts Super Tuesday
Facebook faced widespread outages on the morning of Super Tuesday, leaving users unable to log in during a critical moment for primary elections.
UPDATE 12:05 a.m.: All services seem to be back up.
UPDATE 11:43 a.m.: Some users have reported being able to get back into Facebook and Messenger, although service remains spotty. Instagram and Threads still having issues.
For a time Tuesday morning, it seemed that all of the internet was united with one overwhelming question: Is Facebook down?
The whole Metaverse was.
A technical issue brought down the tech giant websites, according to Meta communications head Andy Stone in an X post. At its peak over half a million Facebook outages were reported on the website DownDetector between 10 to 11 a.m. with users complaining about getting kicked out and not being able to get back in.
Similar issues were reported with other Meta companies such as Instagram, Messenger and Threads. Even Meta Quest headsets kicked users out, 9to5Mac.com reports. YouTube, which is not a Meta company, was also down around the same time although some users reported seeing it if they logged into their Google accounts first.
By noon, users were reporting that first Facebook and then the other services were back up.
Is Facebook down?
Did you get logged out of Facebook? It’s not you. Your password is fine and you don’t need to change it. Facebook’s parent company, Meta, was suffering a service outage. Other Meta sites also experienced outages.
Is Instagram down?
For a couple of hours Tuesday morning, the Instagram app seemed to work for some users but wouldn’t load certain feeds and the desktop version would not load. The peak was 85,020 outages reported at 10:33 a.m. ET.
Is Threads down?
The Threads app was opening but would not display any feeds or posts. The peak of complaints at DownDetector was 860 at 10:31 a.m.
Is Messenger down?
People trying to message friends and family with Messenger found themselves completely logged out. DownDetector reports a peak of user reports of 12,122 at 10:32 a.m.
Is YouTube down?
YouTube, which is not a Meta company, was also reportedly down for some users during roughly the same time period. DownDetector reported a peak of user reports of 5,515 at 10:35 a.m.
When will Facebook be back up?
Stone acknowledged the outage just before 11 a.m. on X, formerly known as Twitter, saying “We’re aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now.”
Service to first Facebook, and then the other Meta services was restored by noon, just in time for people to discuss their state’s presidential primaries today for Super Tuesday.
Sonte later posted that “a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services.”
Tuesday’s outage affecting Meta services comes less than two weeks after AT&T customers suffered a nationwide outage for hours. The company announced the next day that the outage was caused by a technical error due to “the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network” and offered a $5 credit to affected customers.
Users flock to X to find out what’s happening with Facebook, Messenger
Users swarmed other social media sites to ask questions, complain and make jokes, and #facebookdown was trending.
And X owner Elon Musk couldn’t resist getting a dig in.