New Delhi — Facebook and Instagram users in several countries reported widespread disruptions on Friday evening, with thousands saying the Meta-owned platforms were not loading properly or were failing to refresh content.
The outage appeared to begin around 7 p.m. IST, according to user reports and data from outage-tracking platform Downdetector, which showed a sharp rise in complaints.
The disruption was not confined to one region. Users in multiple countries reported similar problems at roughly the same time.
In India, users in several cities said they were unable to access Facebook and Instagram normally. Many reported that feeds were not loading, while others said the apps were unable to refresh content.
Some users also reported login problems and difficulty accessing specific features on the platforms.
As the services faced issues, many users turned to other social media platforms, including X, to check whether the problem was widespread. Posts from affected users suggested that both Facebook and Instagram were impacted, while some also reported problems with Facebook Messenger.
The outage appeared to affect users in different ways. Some said the websites remained accessible, while others reported that the mobile apps were unable to load new content or update timelines.
The varying nature of the disruption led to speculation that the issue could be linked to Meta’s backend systems rather than users’ internet connections or devices.
Downdetector showed more than 100,000 reports related to Facebook alone, underscoring the scale of the outage. Instagram also saw a significant number of complaints, with reports continuing to rise as more users flagged issues.
Meta had not issued an official statement on the cause of the disruption at the time of writing. The company also had not provided a timeline for restoring normal service.
Users tried common troubleshooting steps, including restarting apps, switching internet networks and checking for software updates. However, reports suggested the issue was likely on Meta’s side, limiting the effectiveness of those measures. (Source: IANS)
