Meta’s head of communications said the company had 'resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted'
Author of the article:
National Post Staff
Associated Press
Published Mar 05, 2024 • Last updated Mar 05, 2024 • 2 minute read
A widespread outage on Tuesday morning affected users of Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, Threads and Messenger platforms. The internet traffic observer Down Detector was showing vast outages, with problems being reported across the world, suggesting a global outage.
But within hours the platforms were working again. Andy Stone, Meta’s head of communications, said on X, formerly Twitter, that the company had “resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”
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Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience. https://t.co/ybyyAZNAMn
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) March 5, 2024
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Users had reported being locked out of theirFacebook accounts, and that feeds on the platform as well as Threads and Instagram were not refreshing. WhatsApp, also owned by Meta, did not seem to be affected.
A senior official with the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency told reporters Tuesday that the agency was “not aware of any specific election nexus nor any specific malicious cyberactivity nexus to the outage.”
The problem came just ahead of Thursday’s deadline for Big Tech companies to comply with the European Union’s new Digital Markets Act. To comply, Meta is making changes, like allowing users to separate theirFacebook and Instagram accounts so personal information can’t be combined to target them with online ads. It’s not clear whether the outage is connected to any preparations Meta might be carrying out for the change.
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In 2021,Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were down for hours, an outage the company said was a result of faulty changes on routers that co-ordinate network traffic between its data centres.
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The outage was among the top trending topics on X, with users saying they had suddenly been logged out of the Meta-owned social media platforms.
The outage, which began shortly after 10 a.m. ET, quickly became the top trending topic on X, with many poking fun at how, when one social media feed went down, people just switched to another.
As #facebookdown, “My Facebook” and even #CyberAttack became trending topics on X, reaction included anger and upset, although some users managed a more jovial response. Reference book publisher Merriam-Webster tweeted out: Facebook and IG are down — time to bust out your Dictionary.
— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) March 5, 2024Facebook and IG are down - time to bust out your Dictionary.
Let’s. Go.
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With files from The Associated Press
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