People in the United States woke up to unexpected trouble on October 14, 2024, as they found Facebook and Instagram to be down. The two Meta-owned social media platforms seemed to be facing a major disruption and kept popping error messages for several people across the country.
While an official comment has yet to come from Mark Zuckerber's Meta, the problem was reportedly caused by a website glitch. The unexpected outage left people either confused or troubled as they took to X and shared the same with their fellows.
Speaking how many people would have thought the error was because of their Facebook being hacked, a user tweeted:
"Everyone running to X, checking if their Facebook is hacked or smthng!"
Some other users shared similar thoughts about the issue with Facebook and Instagram as they tweeted:
"is fb getting deleted or? 😂," said one user.
"Anyone else faceboon down?, No posts available & Photos Gone What's happening??," tweeted another user.
"Is Facebook and IG broken?," asked one X user.
"Facebook and Instagram down for maintenance for many people. Are you affected?," questioned another user.
The outage that lasted for over an hour caused panic among several users. Afraid about the worst, they tweeted:
"Me after checking on Twitter that Meta is just down and I'm not hacked since my Instagram isn’t loading and my Facebook got "session logged out” 😂," shared one user.
"I thought my Facebook was hacked, and I restarted my phone like that would stop it. 😂🤦🏽♀️," joked one X user.
"Man I thought somebody snatched my fb page I just made it" said one user.
All you need to know about the recent outage of Meta's Instagram and Facebook
The Instagram and Facebook outage impacted hundreds and thousands of users across the United States on Monday, October 14, 2024. The matter was reportedly caused by a now-resolved website glitch.
While most people from across the country claimed they were unable to log in to the two Meta-owned apps, others said they could not access the social feeds. Some of the users who were able to use the Instagram app reportedly experienced slow and laggy performance.
People were faced with multiple errors when trying to post or view stories from their friends or social media creators. While it was not heavily reported, some users claimed that the outage also impacted Insta's Threads app.
As per Downdetector website, the issue peaked at around 1:35 p.m. ET. At the time, the outage-tracking website had received over 12,000 reports from people facing troubles when accessing Facebook. Meanwhile, there were over 5,000 reports of people having issues with Instagram.
Meta's Facebook and Insta faced a similar global outage in March 2024. The problem was caused by a technical issue and impacted thousands and millions of users. At the time, Downdetector received over 550,000 reports of errors with Facebook, and over 92,000 reports of issues with Instagram.
Readers must note that Downdetector works around reports submitted by users across specific regions and across the globe. The website only shows issues reported in a specific time period, hence the exact number of people affected by the Instagram and Facebook outage may greatly vary.