'Technical issue' sparks widespread Facebook, Meta problems

(NEXSTAR) — Meta users reported widespread issues with the company's social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Threads on Wednesday.

User-reported issues for Facebook alone topped 90,000 on Downdetector as of 12:30 p.m. CT. Outage reports for Instagram had exceeded 60,000, while about 11,000 were reported on Messenger and WhatsApp.

The leading complaints for Facebook, Instagram, and Threads were related to the app, Downdetector shows. The top issue for WhatsApp users was sending messages while Messenger users were struggling to log in.

Users outside of the U.S. were also reporting issues with the Meta sites on Downdetector. Complaints were reported in Brazil, Argentina, Puerto Rico, Panama, Portugal, and Venezuela, among other countries.

Shortly before 1 p.m. CT, reported issues with the sites began to dip on Downdetector.

Meta's status tracker, however, was showing "major disruptions" across Facebook Ads Manager, Messaging Ads, Messenger API for Instagram, the Messenger platform, and WhatsApp Business API. Workplace from Meta was "recovering from disruptions" as of early Wednesday afternoon while its ads transparency tool was experiencing some disruptions.

Just before 2 p.m. CT, commerce offerings Facebook and Instagram Shops and Catalog were also reportedly experiencing major disruptions.

In a post to X, Instagram said it was aware of "a technical issue impacting some people's ability to access" the platform.

"We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and are sorry for any inconvenience," the post added. Meta shared a similar post to X at around 12:45 p.m. CT, acknowledging the issue was impacting "some users' ability to access our apps."

"We're experiencing wide-spread major disruptions across all services and products," Meta wrote in an update on its status page. "Our engineering teams are aware and are working on restoring services."

In March, Facebook and Instagram users found themselves locked out of their accounts during a widespread outage that also impacted Messenger and Threads. Andy Stone, Meta’s head of communications, addressed the outage on X, explaining that "a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services."