Users of Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger and Threads regained access to the platforms Tuesday after a widespread outage took the sites down for hundreds of thousands of people.
Meta, the parent company of the platforms, said it was investigating βmajor disruptionsβ that impacted its services on Tuesday morning. It was not immediately clear what caused the issues.
YouTube loading issues resolved, company says
Update 2:10 p.m. EST March 5: Loading issues reported Tuesday by YouTube users have been resolved, company officials said about two and a half hours after they first acknowledged the problems.
YouTube team members confirmed around 11:30 a.m. ET that they were working to fix the issues, which caused some users to see blank homepages and error messages. Just after 2 p.m., officials took to social media to share that βthis is now fixed.β
quick update for everyone: this is now fixed π
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) March 5, 2024
please let us know if you're still seeing any loading issues! https://t.co/GX2VxITv7e
It was not immediately clear what caused the issues.
Meta apologizes after widespread platform outage
Update 1 p.m. EST March 5: Officials with Meta apologized for the outage that brought down its social media platforms for hundreds of thousands of users on Tuesday.
βWe know some people were having trouble accessing our apps earlier,β company officials said on X, formerly known as Twitter. βApologies for any inconvenience this may have caused, and thank you for your patience while our teams worked quickly to resolve!β
We know some people were having trouble accessing our apps earlier. Apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused, and thank you for your patience while our teams worked quickly to resolve!
— Meta Newsroom (@MetaNewsroom) March 5, 2024
It remained unclear what caused the issues on Tuesday. Meta said it is investigating.
βTechnical issueβ resolved after causing Meta platform outage, spokesperson says
Update 12:50 p.m. EST March 5: A spokesperson for Meta said a technical issue that caused the companyβs social media sites to go down for hundreds of thousands of users has been resolved.
βWe resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience,β spokesperson Andy Stone said.
Meta did not immediately share how many users were affected by the outage or say more about what caused the issues.
Investigating outage βthe highest priority company wide,β Meta says
Update 12:35 p.m. EST March 5: As Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger and Threads started to come back online for some users on Tuesday, Meta officials said their focus was on figuring out what caused the disruption.
βThe team is actively investigating and it is the highest priority company wide,β the company said in an update posted online at 12:20 p.m. βWe will keep you informed once we have fully completed the investigation, resolution and developed the Root Cause analysis.β
YouTube users also report issues
Update 12:15 p.m. EST March 5: Officials with YouTube said the video sharing platform was also experiencing issues on Tuesday after Meta platforms went down for hundreds of thousands of users.
It was not immediately clear whether the issues experienced by the two companies were related.
βWeβve seen reports of loading issues with YouTube, rest assured weβre working on a fix now!β members of the YouTube team said in a post on its support pages. The team acknowledged that some users were seeing an empty homepage and an error message and experiencing problems while scrolling YouTube Shorts.
thanks to everyone who sent notes about loading issues with YouTube: we're on it! π
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) March 5, 2024
will follow up here once things are back to normal, you can also follow our Help Community post for details β‘οΈ https://t.co/4Ezmtku3Em
Facebook, Instagram back online for some users
Update 11:50 a.m. EST March 5: Some Facebook and Instagram users said they were able to access the sites again about an hour and a half after reports first surfaced of issues on the sites.
Some users said they were able to access the platforms through their mobile apps but not the desktop sites. Others said they were still unable to access either platform.
Meta said in an update posted online around 11:50 a.m. that it was βrecovering from an earlier outage affecting the ability to log in to our platforms.β
βServices are in the process of being restored,β the update read. βWe apologize for an inconvenience that this may have caused.β
Meta spokesman: βWe are working on this nowβ
Update 11:25 a.m. EST March 5: Meta spokesperson Andy Stone acknowledged issues with the companyβs social media sites in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
βWeβre aware people are having trouble accessing our services,β Stone said. βWe are working on this now.β
We're aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) March 5, 2024
Tens of thousands of people reported issues using Instagram on Tuesday, while hundreds of thousands of people said they had issues with Facebook. The issue appeared to be impacting users worldwide.
Meta acknowledges issues with Facebook, Instagram
Update 11:10 a.m. EST March 5: Meta, Facebook and Instagramβs parent company, confirmed that engineers were working to resolve an outage that is causing βmajor disruptionsβ for users of its social media apps on Tuesday morning.
βWe are aware of an issue users are having logging into our platforms,β the company said in an update around 11:05 a.m. βOur engineering teams are aware and we are actively looking to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.β
Tens of thousands of people have reported issues on Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messager and Threads.
Original report: As of about 10:15 a.m. ET, more than 125,000 people have reported issues on Facebook, according to the outage tracking site DownDetector. The site had more than 17,000 reports of outages on Instagram.
People trying to access Facebook found themselves logged out of their accounts on the desktop site. On mobile apps, users saw a message saying that their sessions had expired.
Instagram showed users a message warning that said, βSomething went wrongβ on the desktop site, while feeds were unable to be refreshed on the app.
Facebook Messenger also appeared to be down, with users seeing log-in screens on Tuesday. Thousands of people reported issues, according to Down Detector. Threads, which is also run by Facebook and Instagramβs parent company Meta, was also down with users unable to access their homepages.
It was not immediately clear what might have caused the issues or how widespread they might be.
Check back for more on this developing story.
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