SOCIAL media platforms, Facebook and Instagram were both down on Tuesday, March 5, with users unable to access their accounts.
According to reports, the incident occurred between noon and 4pm (UTC+1, West Africa Time), and affected users globally.
Messaging apps, Facebook Messenger, and Threads were also affected. All are under the umbrella of the Meta network.
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Users discovered that Messenger and Facebook had issues when they could not connect to their accounts, even with the correct login information.
Most users confirmed the development and claimed they could not access their accounts.
Meta also confirmed the glitch.
“We’re aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now,” Meta’s Communications Director, Andy Stone, posted on X.
However, The ICIR observed that the disruption was over around 6 pm.
In July 2021, The ICIR reported that Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms were hit by major global outages, affecting tens of thousands of users, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.
The social media giants confirmed the outage with messages posted on Twitter.
“We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products,” the official Twitter accounts said.
Users trying to access Facebook in affected areas were greeted with the message: “Something went wrong. We’re working on it, and we’ll get it fixed as soon as we can.”
Instagram users who tried to use the application on desktops received a ‘5XX server error’ message.
The company said it was “aware that some people were having trouble accessing the Facebook app,” and it was working on restoring access.
The company did not say what caused the outage.
Downdetector, which only tracks outages by collating status reports from a series of sources, including user-submitted errors on its platform, showed over 50,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Facebook and Instagram. The outage might be affecting a more significant number of users.
WhatsApp was also down for over 35,000 users, while Facebook Messenger was down for nearly 9,800 users.
A reporter with the ICIR
A Journalist with a niche for quality and a promoter of good governance