Facebook, Instagram suffer global outage as millions report login failures

Facebook and Instagram users across multiple countries experienced widespread access difficulties on Friday following a major outage that disrupted services across Meta-owned platforms.

Thousands of users reported login failures, loading errors and inability to refresh feeds on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, according to outage-tracking platform Downdetector.

The monitoring site recorded a sharp spike in user complaints, indicating that the disruption affected users globally. Downdetector also flagged possible problems across Facebook and Instagram services as reports surged.

Users affected by the outage reported being unexpectedly logged out of their accounts, encountering persistent error messages and struggling to access core platform features, including messaging and content feeds.

Preliminary data from Downdetector showed tens of thousands of complaints during the peak of the disruption, although the actual number of affected users may be higher, as the platform relies on voluntary reporting.

Meta acknowledged the issue through its communications director, Andy Stone, who confirmed that the company was aware of the disruption and working to restore full service across its platforms.

The outage also impacted Facebook Messenger and several business tools within Meta’s ecosystem, raising concerns among users who rely on the platforms for communication and digital operations.

As of the time of filing this report, the company had not disclosed the cause of the outage, while engineers continued efforts to stabilise services.

The incident adds to a growing list of occasional global disruptions affecting Meta platforms in recent years, underscoring the scale and dependency of billions of users on its social media infrastructure.