Facebook and Instagram back online after sudden US outage shocks thousands

Meta's core social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, have successfully recovered following a brief, widespread service disruption that impacted thousands of users across the United States.

The disruption began at approximately 8:55 p.m. ET, with services largely stabilizing and reports dropping sharply by 10:00 p.m. ET.

According to outage tracking data from Downdetector, problem reports peaked at over 17,000 for Facebook and more than 5,000 for Instagram. While heavily concentrated in the U.S., minor ripple effects and access issues were also noted by users in other international regions.

Meta did not immediately issue a formal statement or comment regarding the underlying cause of the technical hiccup.

However, both platforms have since returned to normal operation.

Because Downdetector aggregates issues via user-submitted status reports, the exact number of impacted individuals may have been even higher. Services have since returned to normal.