This is why Facebook and Instagram were down and what to expect in the near future

Meta platforms, namely Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Threads, encountered a widespread outage on Tuesday, disrupting user access to their accounts.

Many users reported being unexpectedly logged out and experiencing difficulties logging back in, raising concerns about potential hacking or cyberattacks.

Additionally, users faced challenges loading content during the outage.

The disruption, which began around 5 pm for South African users on Tuesday, impacted individuals globally, as reported by DownDetector.

Meta’s head of communications, Andy Stone, acknowledged the issue and confirmed that a technical problem had caused difficulties in accessing their services. Stone expressed apologies for any inconvenience caused and stated that the problem was swiftly resolved for affected users.

However, no specific details regarding the cause of the outage were provided.

While internet monitoring firm Netblocks suggested that the issues might be linked to login sessions across multiple countries, there were no indications of country-level internet disruptions or government-imposed filtering.

The outage coincided with the looming deadline for Big Tech companies, including Meta, to comply with the European Union’s new Digital Markets Act (DMA).

It remains unclear whether the disruption is connected to Meta’s efforts to adhere to the regulatory requirements under the DMA.

This recent outage is not the first experienced by Meta-owned platforms.

In 2021, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp encountered a prolonged hour-long outage attributed to faulty changes on routers managing network traffic between data centers.


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