No, It Wasn’t Just You: Facebook And Instagram Are Both Down Today

December 11, 2024
1 min read
iphone, ios, home screen, close up, pixels, retina, smartphone, icon, facebook
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, all owned by Meta, experienced widespread outages Wednesday afternoon, leaving users across the globe unable to access the platforms.

The disruptions began around 1 p.m., with reports of outages surging on Downdetector and frustrated users flooding social media forums.

📱 Why It Matters: Meta’s platforms connect billions of people worldwide, and sudden outages underscore the heavy reliance on these services for communication, business, and personal connection. When platforms like WhatsApp go dark, the impact is immediate and far-reaching.

🚨 What Happened: Users trying to access Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp during the outage encountered error messages or found themselves logged out of accounts.

• On Instagram, users reported posts failing to load.

• On Facebook, people were logged out and unable to log back in.

• On WhatsApp, users globally were unable to send or receive messages.

🤔 Between the Lines: Meta has not disclosed the cause of the outage. While such disruptions are not uncommon, they often highlight vulnerabilities in the infrastructure supporting these massive networks. They also raise questions about the company’s ability to maintain uptime given its dominance in global communication.


Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, all owned by Meta, experienced widespread outages Wednesday afternoon, leaving users across the globe unable to access the platforms.
B.T. Clark
Publisher at 

B.T. Clark is an award-winning journalist and the Publisher of The Georgia Sun. He has 25 years of experience in journalism and served as Managing Editor of Neighbor Newspapers in metro Atlanta for 15 years and Digital Director at Times-Journal Inc. for 8 years. His work has appeared in several newspapers throughout the state including Neighbor Newspapers, The Cherokee Tribune and The Marietta Daily Journal. He is a Georgia native and a fifth-generation Georgian.