Millions of users across the world were thrown into confusion on Sunday after Facebook suffered a major outage that prevented access to accounts, while Instagram also experienced widespread service disruptions.
Checks on Sunday morning showed that Facebook’s desktop platform was inaccessible to many users, displaying an error message stating: “Account Temporarily Unavailable. Your account is currently unavailable due to a site issue. We expect this to be resolved shortly. Please try again in a few minutes.”
The disruption, which began around 9:30 a.m., quickly spread across multiple regions, with thousands of users reporting they could no longer log into their accounts or access the platform.
Real-time outage monitoring website DownDetector recorded a sharp surge in complaints, with more than 3,000 reports filed within a short period as the incident unfolded. Frustrated users also flocked to other online platforms to confirm whether the problem was widespread.
Although Facebook’s desktop version was largely inaccessible, some users said the mobile application remained operational, allowing limited access to the platform.
The disruption extended to Instagram, another social media platform owned by Meta, where users reported that feeds stopped refreshing and new posts failed to load.
The simultaneous outages affected personal communication, business activities, digital marketing, content creation and online commerce, highlighting the heavy dependence of billions of people worldwide on Meta’s social media platforms.
As of the time of filing this report, Meta had yet to issue an official statement explaining the cause of the widespread service disruption or when full services would be restored.