Instagram, Facebook down globally: Meta 'working' to solve issue as users flag call to 'log in again, change password

 

Social media apps Facebook and Instagram have resumed services after a short outage on 5 March.

Facebook and Instagram services were restored after an outage was reported in India and many other parts of the world Tuesday evening. Users complained about log in issues on both these social media platforms. They were logged out of both Facebook and Instagram. Some were unable to refresh Instagram pages. Many users were also asked to change passwords. Soon after, YouTube users also started facing a similar issue.

“Log in again; session expired; couldn't refresh feed," were some of the messages that popped up while using the Facebook and Instagram apps. The disruptions started around 8:30 pm on Tuesday.

Outage tracking website Downdetector.com also revealed that Meta Platforms' Facebook and Instagram were down for tens of thousands of users on Tuesday. There were more than 3,00,000 reports of outages for Facebook, while there were more than 20,000 reports for Instagram, according to the website which tracks outages by collating status reports from several sources, including users.

According to Reuters, Meta's status dashboard showed the application programming interface for WhatsApp Business was also facing issues. There were around 200 reports of outages for WhatsApp on Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from several sources, including users.

However, services were restored around 10 pm on Tuesday.

Meta reacts

"We're aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now," Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a post on X social media. 

X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk was quick to take potshots at Meta, saying, "If you’re reading this post, it’s because our servers are working."

Netizens fear hacking, cyber attack

Hundreds of people took to microblogging site X reporting about Facebook and Instagram outage. One user wrote, “Is meta down or am I being hacked? 😂 my instagram isn’t loading and my facebook is also “session logged out". Another said, “I thought my Facebook and Instagram got hacked for a second."