Meta's Facebook and Instagram were down for hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. Picture: Thilina Kaluthotage / NurPhoto / NurPhoto via AFP
Meta platforms Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Threads, experienced a widespread outage on Tuesday, leaving users unable to access their accounts.
A large number of users reported being logged out and unable to log back in, sparking concerns of hacking or a cyberattack.
Other users faced difficulties loading content.
The disruption, which began around 5pm for South Africans on Tuesday, according to DownDetector, affected users globally.
Meta's head of communications, Andy Stone, acknowledged the issue, stating, "Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologise for any inconvenience."
Stone did not provide further details regarding the cause of the outage.
Internet monitoring firm Netblocks suggested that the problems might be related to login sessions across multiple countries but noted that there were no indications of country-level internet disruptions or filtering typically imposed by governments.
The outage occurred just ahead of the deadline for Big Tech companies to comply with the European Union's new Digital Markets Act (DMA).
It is uncertain whether the disruption is linked to any preparations Meta might be undertaking to comply with the regulations.
Under the DMA, Meta is set to make changes such as allowing users to separate their Facebook and Instagram accounts to prevent the combination of personal information for targeted advertising.
This outage is not the first experienced by Meta-owned platforms.
In 2021, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp suffered a prolonged hour-long outage due to faulty changes on routers coordinating network traffic between data centres.
Despite past disruptions, Meta's stock appeared unaffected by the outage, reflecting investor confidence in the company's ability to overcome such technical challenges
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