DEVELOPING: Massive Social Media Outage Affecting Facebook, Instagram And More
Reports of outages impacting several of the most popular social media platforms came pouring in on Tuesday morning with few details regarding what might have caused the widespread issues.
Users of Meta properties including Facebook and Instagram were booted off and unable to log back in as voters across the country took part in the biggest primary election day of the 2024 presidential cycle.
Here’s what WIVB reported:
On mobile, Facebook users were met with a pop-up reading “session expired, please log in again.” Tapping on the message would take them to a log-in screen, where users reported seeing a message reading “Unable to log in. An unexpected error occurred. Please try logging in again.”
The issue was widely chronicled on X, which was still working normally.
Everyone on their way to Twitter to check if Instagram and Facebook is working pic.twitter.com/ezyiBYhCJj
— Ahmedd🧉 (@Lisandrosprop) March 5, 2024
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”. 😂 #facebookdown #instagramdown #meta pic.twitter.com/gVZkxDd93J
— ً (@raphaelmiguel) March 5, 2024
BREAKING: Instagram and Facebook has went offline, as users are unable to access the platform or refresh their activity feeds.
— The Crypto Network (@raffayalvi) March 5, 2024
I thought my Facebook and Instagram got hacked for a second🤣
— Big E (@Big_E) March 5, 2024
The outage came less than two weeks after cell and Wi-Fi service was interrupted for hours, impacting AT&T customers nationwide.
As CNBC reported at the time:
The CEO of AT&T on Sunday apologized for the widespread cellular outage that knocked out service for thousands of customers, saying some accounts will receive credits to compensate for the incident.
“For the portion of consumer and small business customers most impacted by the outage, we are automatically applying an account credit to compensate them for the inconvenience they experienced,” Chief Executive John Stankey wrote in a letter to employees.
“We all know that our customers receive tremendous value and convenience for the nominal daily cost of our service, and outages sometimes have outsized impacts on some subscribers that may be greater than the face value of the credit. For that reason, I believe that crediting those customers for essentially a full day of service is the right thing to do,” he continued. “Despite that impact to the business, I believe this approach is fully manageable while achieving the 2024 business objectives we have set for ourselves and our stated financial guidance.”
Although the company downplayed the incident, authorities had investigated the outage as a possible cyberattack:
