More than half a million reports were noted by tracking website Downdetector in what was a global outage on Meta's platforms. Access has now returned.
ADVERTISEMENTMeta's social media platforms are returning to normal after a global outage barred thousands of users from accessing their Facebook and Instagram accounts.
According to network tracking website Downdetector, more than 500,000 reports had been filed on Tuesday afternoon regarding outages on the two social media accounts.
Downdetector tracks outages by collating status reports from several sources including user-submitted errors on its platform.
According to the reports, multiple countries around the world were impacted, including the United States and the United Kingdom.
Internet monitor site Netblocks said issues were mainly being reported with login sessions, adding that several countries were hit by the outage.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Meta communications director Andy Stone acknowledged there was an outage and that the company had now resolved the issue.
"Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services," he wrote.
"We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologise for any inconvenience".
Meta's own status page, which gives updates on the service of each of the company's platforms, also wouldn't load at the time of publication but now indicates all outstanding issues are resolved.
The cause of the outage is still unknown.
Many also noted that the outage comes as political campaigning in the US moves up a gear on what's known as "Super Tuesday," meaning candidates will not be able to reach potential voters using the social media platforms.
"Super Tuesday" is the day when voters in the largest number of states go to the polls in primary elections for presidential candidates.
Meta experienced its largest outage in 2021 when Facebook went down, prompting an apology from founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
This article was updated by our team as the story evolved.
