Social Media Stands Still: Meta Platforms Hit by Global Outage

Social media giant Meta Platforms, formerly Facebook, experienced a major hiccup in its mission to connect the world on Tuesday. For nearly two hours, users across the globe faced widespread outages on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Messenger.

The disruption began around 10:00 AM Eastern Time, with many users reporting sudden logouts from Facebook and Messenger. Instagram users found themselves unable to refresh content feeds. Meta’s communications director, Andy Stone, quickly took to [platform where Stone posted] to acknowledge the issue, stating they were “working on this now.”

An apology for the inconvenience followed from Meta spokesperson Erin McPike, who directed WIRED to Stone’s updated post confirming the issue had been “resolved as quickly as possible.” However, it took until nearly 1:00 PM ET for Meta to announce on Threads that the issue was fixed.

While some hacker groups claimed responsibility, similar outages in the past, like the one that hit Facebook and Instagram in 2021, were often traced back to internal updates rather than malicious actors.

The timing of the outage couldn’t have been more interesting, coinciding with Super Tuesday in the US, a day with crucial primary elections in fifteen states. Though traditional media, especially television, still attracts the lion’s share of political ad spending, a report by Insider Intelligence suggests a growing trend. Over 28% of projected political ad spending for 2024 is expected to go towards digital platforms, with Meta itself poised to receive an estimated 4.5% of the projected $12.32 billion total.