Science

Elon Musk reacts to global Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp service outage

Tesla CEO, X owner Elon Musk has responded to global shut-down of Meta platforms

By Web Desk
March 05, 2024
Elon Musk at the Vivatech technology startups and innovation fair at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, on June 16, 2023. — AFP
Elon Musk at the Vivatech technology startups and innovation fair at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, on June 16, 2023. — AFP 

Elon Musk, the owner of social media site X, has reacted to the global outage of Meta platforms.

"If you're reading this post, it's because our servers are working," he wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. 

Elon Musk directs an X post to Meta platforms outage. — X/@elonmusk
Elon Musk directs an X post to Meta platforms outage. — X/@elonmusk

After a while, his post was flooded with memes following the mass shut-down of Meta platforms like WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and others.

Though, after over an hour, all Meta platforms started functioning perfectly, but Musk still went on with his posts on X "mocking" the Meta outage.

During the Meta outage, every time a user attempted to visit Instagram, the text "Something went wrong" would appear, preventing them from viewing the information on the photo-sharing website.

Users discovered they were logged out of Facebook and Messenger, causing their login sessions to expire. When they tried to enter Facebook, a pop-up stating that "an unexpected error occurred" had displayed, and they were "unable to log in" again.

Musk included a tweet from Andy Stone, the head of Meta Communications, expressing his indignation, and a picture of three penguins wearing the insignia of the Meta firm, applauding a penguin wearing the X logo.

  
Elon Musk shared this tweet suggesting his social media app was superior to Meta rivals Instagram, Facebook and Threads. — X/@elonmusk
Elon Musk shared this tweet suggesting his social media app was superior to Meta rivals Instagram, Facebook and Threads. — X/@elonmusk 

More than 200,000 Americans were reportedly experiencing issues with Facebook, according to DownDetector. A further 30,000 Americans were having issues with Messenger, and 8,000 were unable to get Facebook Messenger to function.

Additionally, waves of internet humour were soon sparked by this little event. Many expressed their admiration for X, which was once known as Twitter, and made jokes about how millions of social media users had joined them since they couldn't get their fix during the outage.