Facebook, Instagram Recover After Brief Outage That Affected Thousands of Users

Meta's social media platforms are recovering after a brief outage disrupted access for thousands of users on Friday, with Facebook and Instagram experiencing the biggest impact before services gradually returned to normal.

The outage began at around 7 pm IST, prompting a surge in reports on outage tracking platform Downdetector. At its peak, more than 113,000 users reported issues with Facebook, while around 10,000 users flagged problems with Instagram.

A Meta spokesperson earlier confirmed that the company was aware of the issue and was working on a fix, although it did not immediately disclose the cause of the disruption.

Services Gradually Return to Normal

By around 9:15 pm IST, reports of problems on both Facebook and Instagram had dropped significantly, suggesting that services were being restored for most users. According to Downdetector, complaint volumes fell sharply from their peak as the outage subsided.

Users had reported a range of issues during the disruption, including problems loading feeds, accessing accounts and using certain features across the platforms. As is often the case during large-scale outages, many users turned to rival social media platforms to confirm whether the issue was widespread.

Actual Impact May Be Higher

Downdetector compiles outage information based on user-submitted reports and other data sources, meaning the reported figures may not reflect the total number of people affected.

Meta has not yet shared details on what caused the disruption or whether other services within its ecosystem were impacted beyond the reported issues on Facebook and Instagram.