Facebook and Instagram hit by major outage
What's the story
Facebook and Instagram, two of the world's leading social media platforms, are currently grappling with significant technical issues.
These glitches have left thousands of users worldwide unable to access their accounts.
DownDetector, an online outage monitoring website, reported numerous problems with Instagram earlier today.
Additionally, about a hundred users reported difficulties with the Facebook app itself.
Access issues
'Something went wrong': Users encounter error messages
Users trying to log into Instagram were met with an error message stating, "Something went wrong" and "There's an issue and the page could not be loaded."
NetBlocks, a group that monitors internet disruptions, confirmed that these outages are not due to country-level internet disruptions or filtering.
The group clarified, "Meta platforms including Instagram and Facebook are currently experiencing international outages; incident not related to country-level internet disruptions or filtering."
User difficulties
User complaints highlight specific issues with platforms
Users have reported specific issues such as problems switching profiles or loading photos on Instagram.
One user lamented, "Cannot switch from one profile to my business profile; it keeps crashing on my phone. Also, when I'm on my PC, I cannot load photos, share a post, or anything. I've reported this about 10 times, and nothing has changed."
Other users have also voiced their frustrations over the inability to scroll through the app due to feed not refreshing.
Additional problems
Facebook Messenger and group management also affected
Issues were not limited to Instagram and Facebook's main platforms. Users also reported problems with Messenger group chats, with one user noting, "Messenger group chats broken by the looks of it. One to one chats seem ok."
Additionally, difficulties managing Facebook groups were reported, with a user complaining: "Can't approve or decline any member requests for Facebook group. Asked other admin to try and they can't either."