Millions of Facebook users across the globe were left unable to access the platform on Friday after the social media giant suffered a major outage, with Instagram also reporting disruptions for a significant number of users.
The problems took down not just the main Facebook app and website, but also Facebook Messenger. Users were automatically logged out and found themselves unable to log back in, instead being greeted with an error message stating that “an unexpected error occurred.” The main website similarly displayed a message saying “something went wrong” and that the company is “working on it.”
The disruption began shortly before 9:45 a.m. EDT, with users reporting blank screens, frozen feeds, and login failures. Reports flooded in from users across the United States, Australia, Belgium, and the Philippines, ruling out any single network or regional issue.
Instagram was not spared either. Many users reported opening the app only to find a completely blank feed, while others flagged the issue on X (formerly Twitter), with users joking about migrating platforms to figure out if the outage was real.
Reports of disruptions surged on outage-tracking platform Downdetector around 7 pm IST, further confirming the issue was widespread across multiple countries and regions.
Meta had not issued any public statement on the outage at the time of publication. WhatsApp appeared to remain largely functional, though some users reported intermittent issues.
This is a developing story. Users experiencing problems are advised to monitor Meta’s official channels for updates.
