Update: At around 10pm, Instagram appeared to be functioning normally again. The original report follows...
Instagram and Facebook, the social media behemoths owned by Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, are facing a widespread service disruption that left users nationwide grappling with inaccessible platforms. The outage, which emerged late on Tuesday, prompted a flurry of frustrated users to take to alternative social media platforms, particularly X (formerly Twitter), where they expressed their grievances with a dose of humour through memes. Even X owner Elon Musk hasn't held back from taking a potshot at Meta.
As per Meta Communications Director Andy Stone, a fix is underway. WhatsApp, the instant messenger also owned by Meta, appears to be working fine at the time of writing.
According to reports from outage monitoring service Downdetector (screenshot below), the service interruption commenced in India around 8:33 pm local time. At the time of writing, over 19,290 reports of outages were logged from across the country.
A visual representation (screenshot above) provided by Downdetector's outage map showcases Instagram's widespread outage and the reported issues it generated. The map highlights that the majority of problems were concentrated in several major Indian cities, including Bengaluru, Delhi, Lucknow, Nagpur, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, and Hyderabad. Users, in their shared experiences across various social media platforms, have underscored their frustration at being unable to view photos and profile pictures within the Instagram app.
Moreover, Downdetector's data indicates that the impact of this recent outage transcended India, with Instagram users in numerous countries worldwide also feeling the effects. Countries grappling with disruptions include Australia, Brazil, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Why Are Facebook, Instagram Down?
Meta has a dedicated page that shows the current status of Meta business products, which showed a Major Disruptions label for services such as Facebook, Graph, and WhatsApp Business.
As per the Admin Center Status page, both Admin Center and Device Manager showed the same label (pictured below).
Meta Communications Director Andy Stone tweeted that a fix is currently underway.
How Elon Musk And Other Users Are Reacting To Facebook, Instagram Outage
Musk promptly sent out a tweet in his signature trolling style. Here's what he posted:
Of course, in classic outage tradition, other users are also swarming to X to figure out if there's an actual outage, or just express their frustration with hilarious memes. Here are some top reactions:
And of course, our personal favourite: