On Tuesday, Facebook and Instagram experienced severe issues worldwide, with login attempts failing and feeds stalling. The outages began at 3.30pm GMT and were resolved by 5pm. Meta, the parent company of both platforms, issued a statement apologizing for the inconvenience and explaining that a technical issue caused the problems. The White House monitored the situation, particularly with Super Tuesday elections taking place in the US.
The outage also affected Google’s platform, indicating a common cause between the two tech conglomerates. Meta’s business status page reported disruptions, with major issues for the admin centre and Facebook login. Some services, like WhatsApp and Facebook ads transparency page, continued to work.
In a post on his social media platform X, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone acknowledged the difficulties users faced and assured that they were working on a solution. Google’s Ad Manager also experienced disruptions, affecting some business customers like the Guardian. However, most consumer-facing services like search and YouTube remained operational.
The root cause of the outages is suspected to be a systemic internet issue, with sporadic problems reported on other sites as well. These issues are not expected to be as severe as Facebook’s 2021 outage caused by a configuration error in the BGP protocol. Facebook accidentally deleted its own address, leading to hours of downtime.
Google has been contacted for further comment on the situation.
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