Sunday morning began with a stark red warning for millions: "Account Temporarily Unavailable. Your account is currently unavailable due to a site issue. We expect this to be resolved shortly. Please try again in a few minutes."
The message greeted Facebook users trying to log in via desktop, while Instagram users were hit with a different error: "Sorry, something went wrong. We're working on getting this fixed as soon as we can." By 9am, DownDetector had logged a sharp spike in reports for both platforms, alongside Facebook Messenger. Over 4,000 Facebook users had already reported issues by 8.45am, and more than 1,500 Instagram users followed around 9am.
“Facebook and Instagram suffered a global outage on Sunday, locking thousands out of their accounts.”
The outage was global. Users in the UK, the US, Indonesia, Myanmar and Australia all reported problems. One user in Perth wrote on DownDetector: "Your account is currently unavailable due to a site issue. We expect this to be resolved shortly." A user in Texas received the same alert, as did another in Myanmar. Some Instagram users initially feared their accounts had been hacked after being unexpectedly logged out.
Despite the scale of the disruption, the outages were not universal. Many Facebook users could still access the platform on their phones, with nearly 60% of complaints about the website version. Instagram users reported issues with both the app and their feed. One user on Reddit said: "The website doesn’t work for me too, but the mobile app still works. Unfortunately I also cannot use the call feature of messenger. It tells me that my app is outdated but I tried uninstalling and reinstalling it and still get the same error."
On X, users voiced their frustration. Kiera posted: "Uh oh, #FacebookDown," while Athan Hilaki wrote: "Nooooo! Facebook is down? @facebook #facebookdown #facebookstatus #facebook." A UK user asked: "Yep happening to me here in the UK, cant access desktop version. any idea when this might be resolved?"
Both platforms are owned by Meta, but the tech giant had yet to comment as thousands continued to report issues. With no timeline for a fix, users were left refreshing their browsers and waiting for their accounts to return.