Facebook and Instagram are back up after an extended downtime

If you were trying to use Facebook or Instagram yesterday, then you may have run into difficulties. You are not the only one – from the looks of it, both social media platforms experienced disruptions on Monday, which left users in multiple regions unable to access the platforms. The disruptions had the most severe impact in the US – sparking frustration among users – as reports of issues started to surface in the early afternoon.

The latest string of complaints was at 9:09 AM (today, October 15) with a total of 16 reports. Currently, there are no user reports for current problems at the platform, and Instagram seems to be up and about once more. The outages also affected users from other parts of the world, including the UAE, and other Meta services, such as Threads, Meta’s newest social networking platform.

When it comes to outages, Downdetector is the place to go to get the latest updates on the development. Downdetector – the website that tracks real-time service outages based on user reports – reported that the outage commenced sometime after 1 PM ET, and 1:40 p.m., more than 12,000 people reported issues with Facebook, while over 5,000 complaints were logged for Instagram. At its peak, there were nearly about 92,000 reports of outages for Instagram.

Coming to Instagram, it is noted that 68% of users reported problems with logging onto the photo-sharing platform, while 26% of them ran into issues with the Instagram app itself. The remaining 6% of users had problems with loading profiles, while several others reported unexpected logouts, and some said they were unable to log back into their accounts. Other users also faced error messages such as “something is wrong” on Instagram’s interface.

Coming to Facebook, Meta’s flagship social media platform experienced similar issues – reports state that there were over 550,000 reports of disruptions for Facebook at the peak of the outage. The latest of the reports came at 9:31 AM (on October 15), and the service seems to be restored for now. During the outage, 71% of users reported issues with logging in, while 19% of users reported problems with Facebook’s servers. The remaining 10% of users ran into problems with loading their profiles.

Of course, the outages prompted frustrated reactions from users, many of whom predictably turned to popular micro-blogging platform X to confirm the outage. One Instagram user commented, “My Facebook and Instagram logged out on their own, and now all the posts are gone… is Meta down?” Another user joked, “Instagram crashed right when I was trying to stalk people – now I have to do my homework instead.” “I can’t post stories or comment on anything. Instagram keeps acting up.” Facebook users similarly voiced concerns, with many saying they were unable to load their profiles or post updates. One user expressed concern about losing access to a long-held account: “I thought for a second that I lost my 13-year-old Facebook account.”

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