Yes, Facebook, Instagram and Meta’s other platforms had some issues Wednesday.
Users on Facebook Messenger, along with Facebook and Instagram began reporting outages just after 2 p.m. ET Wednesday, according to DownDetector.com.
WhatsApp also began reporting problems about the same time, the site shows.
In a statement to USA TODAY, Meta, Facebook newly named parent company, addressed the situation: “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing Messenger, Workplace Chat and Instagram DMs. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and we apologize for any inconvenience.”
But the various platforms were back up and operating within a few hours. Most users were unaffected by about 6 p.m. ET, according to DownDetector.com.
And about 7:20 p.m. ET, Meta sent a statement to USA TODAY: “Earlier today, some people may have experienced trouble accessing Workplace Chat, Instagram DMs and Messenger. We fixed the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted. We know people and businesses depend on our services around the world and we’re sorry for any disruption this has caused.”
It was just a month ago that the company had one of the longest outages in its history with Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp being down for about six hours.
The incident comes less than a week after CEO Mark Zuckerberg changed the parent company’s name to Meta as a pivot toward the metaverse. And fallout continues from the leaked documents provided by whistleblower Frances Haugen about harms caused by Facebook and Instagram and the company’s failure to take action.
Of course, social networkers had fun – well, as much fun as they can have when their favorite apps are down – Wednesday by migrating to Twitter and making #instagramdown a trending hashtag. One tweeted how everyone goes to Twitter make sure it is not just them whose Instagram is malfunctioning.
While others poked fun at Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg amid this latest outage.
