Instagram and Facebook services restored after worldwide outage

Instagram and Facebook, owned by tech giant Meta, experienced a widespread global outage on Friday, impacting users across North and South America and Europe. The disruption began around 13:30 GMT, with a surge in reports on monitoring platforms like Downdetector indicating widespread connectivity issues and severe login difficulties.

Users reported being unable to access their accounts, with the outage affecting major regions including the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Brazil, Argentina, and Spain. The period of greatest instability occurred between 13:45 and 14:00 GMT. During this time, the United States saw the highest volume of complaints, with Facebook alone receiving about 114,000 reports, alongside 10,000 for Instagram and nearly 16,000 for Facebook Messenger.

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone acknowledged the issue via the social media platform X, stating, "We're back, although it might take a little time for everything to return to normal." While services were progressively being restored, the company's engineering team has not yet disclosed the specific technical reasons behind the server collapse.

By 18:00 GMT, Meta's network in North America showed signs of stabilization, with residual complaints for both Facebook and Instagram dropping to between 300 and 400 reports. WhatsApp, Meta's instant messaging service, also experienced minor fluctuations and connectivity issues globally, though user reports were significantly lower compared to its sister platforms.

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We're back, although it might take a little time for everything to return to normal.