Meta platforms experience widespread outage and login issues—were you affected?
- Replies 13
Staying connected through social media has become a necessity for many.
And with the sudden and unexplained interruption of services like Facebook, it can cause more than a little anxiety.
A widespread outage of social media not only disrupts daily routines but is also a stark reminder of people’s reliance on these digital platforms.
On Wednesday, 6 March, at 2:06 am, Meta's platforms—Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Threads—were hit by widespread technical issues causing concern among their massive user base.
Thousands across Australia found themselves automatically logged out of their Facebook accounts.
Instagram users were greeted with notifications, saying, 'Something went wrong' and found their feeds could not be loaded.
Threads likewise presented users with a pop-up message ‘Something went wrong, please try again later’.
According to the outage tracker Downdetector, the flow of complaints surged from a trickle to over 22,000 reporting disruptions.
The Meta status page itself acknowledged the turmoil, citing 'major disruptions'.
‘Our engineering teams are actively looking to resolve the issue as quickly as possible,’ it said.
While Meta remained tight-lipped about the outage, the issue was addressed within two hours.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone acknowledged the issue, saying, 'Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services.’
‘We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologise for any inconvenience.’
A senior official from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency stated that the agency was ‘not aware of any specific election nexus nor any specific malicious cyber activity nexus to the outage’.
According to London-based internet monitoring firm Netblocks, it stated that there was no sign of ‘country-level internet disruptions or filtering’ imposed by the government.
Matthew Green, Cybersecurity Expert and Associate Professor of Computer Science and Member of the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute, said that the disruption extended beyond Meta platforms.
‘There are a number of services having trouble with at least parts of their systems, particularly the ability to log into websites,’ he said.
‘This may indicate a common cause, like a failure at a major cloud services provider. At the moment, nobody knows exactly what's happening.’
The outage occurred shortly before the deadline for big tech companies to adhere to the European Union's new Digital Markets Act.
Meta is implementing changes to comply with this, such as enabling users to separate their Facebook and Instagram accounts to prevent the combining of personal information for targeted online advertising.
Whether the outage is related to any preparations Meta may make for compliance with the DMA remains unclear.
In 2021, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp experienced hours-long outages attributed by the company to faulty changes on routers coordinating network traffic between its data centres.
In 2023, WhatsApp experienced another brief outage due to ‘connectivity issues’.
Were you affected by the widespread outage of Meta’s platforms? Let us know in the comments below!
And with the sudden and unexplained interruption of services like Facebook, it can cause more than a little anxiety.
A widespread outage of social media not only disrupts daily routines but is also a stark reminder of people’s reliance on these digital platforms.
On Wednesday, 6 March, at 2:06 am, Meta's platforms—Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Threads—were hit by widespread technical issues causing concern among their massive user base.
Thousands across Australia found themselves automatically logged out of their Facebook accounts.
Meta platforms experienced widespread outage on Wednesday, 6 March. Credit: Shutterstock
Instagram users were greeted with notifications, saying, 'Something went wrong' and found their feeds could not be loaded.
Threads likewise presented users with a pop-up message ‘Something went wrong, please try again later’.
According to the outage tracker Downdetector, the flow of complaints surged from a trickle to over 22,000 reporting disruptions.
The Meta status page itself acknowledged the turmoil, citing 'major disruptions'.
‘Our engineering teams are actively looking to resolve the issue as quickly as possible,’ it said.
While Meta remained tight-lipped about the outage, the issue was addressed within two hours.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone acknowledged the issue, saying, 'Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services.’
‘We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologise for any inconvenience.’
A senior official from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency stated that the agency was ‘not aware of any specific election nexus nor any specific malicious cyber activity nexus to the outage’.
According to London-based internet monitoring firm Netblocks, it stated that there was no sign of ‘country-level internet disruptions or filtering’ imposed by the government.
Matthew Green, Cybersecurity Expert and Associate Professor of Computer Science and Member of the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute, said that the disruption extended beyond Meta platforms.
‘There are a number of services having trouble with at least parts of their systems, particularly the ability to log into websites,’ he said.
‘This may indicate a common cause, like a failure at a major cloud services provider. At the moment, nobody knows exactly what's happening.’
The outage occurred shortly before the deadline for big tech companies to adhere to the European Union's new Digital Markets Act.
Meta is implementing changes to comply with this, such as enabling users to separate their Facebook and Instagram accounts to prevent the combining of personal information for targeted online advertising.
Whether the outage is related to any preparations Meta may make for compliance with the DMA remains unclear.
In 2021, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp experienced hours-long outages attributed by the company to faulty changes on routers coordinating network traffic between its data centres.
In 2023, WhatsApp experienced another brief outage due to ‘connectivity issues’.
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