Facebook and Instagram Restore Service After U.S. Outage
Facebook and Instagram, both owned by Meta, returned to normal operation after a sudden outage affected thousands of users across the United States on Sunday evening. Reports of disruptions surpassed 17,000 for Facebook and 5,000 for Instagram before falling sharply later in the night.
Facebook and Instagram hit by sudden outage
The disruption began at around 8:55 p.m. Eastern Time, as reports of problems accessing or using the two platforms began to rise rapidly.
More than 17,000 reports were recorded for Facebook, while Instagram registered over 5,000 reports, indicating that the disruption affected both services within a relatively short period.
By around 10 p.m. Eastern Time, the number of reports had dropped sharply, suggesting that most services had returned to normal following the brief disruption.
Cause of outage remains unclear
The immediate cause of the outage was not clear, and Meta did not immediately provide a statement explaining the nature of the problem or the number of users affected.
Outage monitoring relies on reports submitted by users, meaning the figures recorded may differ from the actual number of people who experienced difficulties accessing Facebook and Instagram or using their services during the disruption.
Latest outage follows July incident
The latest disruption comes after a similar incident affecting the two platforms in July. At the time, around 4,808 reports were recorded for problems with Facebook, while Instagram received 2,829 reports related to service issues.
The latest incident again highlighted the impact that temporary disruptions can have on widely used digital platforms, although Facebook and Instagram subsequently returned to normal operation.