On Tuesday, Meta's suite of apps, including Facebook and Instagram, grappled with widespread technical issues lasting over two hours, leaving hundreds of thousands of users frustrated, Variety reports. Reports flooded in with users encountering errors while attempting to access the platforms.

Among the reported problems, users faced difficulties logging into Facebook, met with error messages such as “Something went wrong. Please try again.” Downdetector noted a significant spike in error reports around 10:30 a.m. ET on March 5, with over 500,000 reports received by 11 a.m. A staggering 76% of the issues reported by Facebook users stemmed from login troubles.

Instagram users also encountered issues, with feeds failing to refresh and an inability to post content on the platform. The outage extended to Meta's Messaging platform and Threads, the company's app similar to Twitter, launched the previous year.

In response, Meta issued an alert at 10:17 a.m. ET, acknowledging “major disruptions” with Facebook Login services and assuring users that engineering teams were actively working to resolve the issue. An update at 12:07 p.m. confirmed that services were in the process of being restored, with an apology for any inconvenience caused.

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone later confirmed that the company swiftly addressed the technical glitch, attributing the outage to a “technical issue” that had hindered users from accessing the services.

While major platform outages are relatively rare, they can have a significant impact, reminding users of their dependence on digital services. The incident evoked memories of a similar outage in 2021, when Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp were inaccessible for nearly six hours, reassuring users that it was not due to malicious activity.

The outage serves as a reminder of the fragility of digital infrastructure and the potential for unexpected disruptions, echoing recent network outages experienced by other tech giants like AT&T.