Users report issues accessing Facebook, Instagram, more

(NEXSTAR) — Users jumping onto Meta’s social media sites Tuesday morning found an unfortunate sign: issue warnings.

Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Threads — all owned by Meta — were reportedly down Tuesday shortly after 9 a.m. CT, DownDetector reports. Users were either unable to load their timelines and new posts or were logged out and unable to log back in.

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.” When trying to log in on a web browser, Facebook users were wrongly told the “password you’ve entered is incorrect.”

Those trying to access Facebook Messenger encountered the same situation. Those trying to access Meta’s Whatsapp reported problems logging in and sending messages on DownDetector.

On Instagram, users have been able to access most content but received a notification on their timeline that the feed could not be refreshed. When trying to access Instagram online, a message like the one below appears:

The message Instagram users were met with while trying to access their timelines via a web browser amid an apparent outage on Tuesday, March 5, 2024. (Instagram via Addy Bink/Nexstar)

Meta’s newest app, Threads, also had trouble loading. Those who were logged out of their accounts reported being unable to log back in.

As of 9:45 a.m. CT, Meta reported “major disruptions” with Facebook log-ins, WhatsApp business API, and the Meta admin center. Regarding Facebook, Meta said it “is aware of an issue impacting Facebook Login. Our engineering teams are actively looking to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.”

Shortly after 10 a.m. CT, Meta’s status tracker site seemingly had trouble loading but showed major disruptions across nearly all of its platforms.

Around 10:25 a.m. CT, some users began reporting that they were again able to access Facebook on desktops. On the app, however, some were told to verify their login on another device — a step they may not have encountered before. Users also reported access to Messenger had been restored, but Instagram and Threads still appeared to be down.

As of 10:30 a.m. CT, Meta was continuing to report major disruptions across its various platforms.

Instagram began returning for users around 11 a.m. CT, on both mobile and web browsers.

It’s currently unclear what is causing the outage.

London-based internet monitoring firm Netblocks said on X that four Meta platforms — Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Threads — were “currently experiencing outages related to login sessions in multiple countries.” But the firm, which advocates for internet freedom, said there was no sign of “country-level internet disruptions or filtering,” which are typically imposed by governments.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.