Meta’s platforms hit by global outage

Meta’s suite of apps faced a major outage Wednesday afternoon, leaving users across the globe unable to access the platforms or send messages. The issues began around 12:40 p.m. ET, with DownDetector reporting significant spikes in error complaints.

By the numbers:

• The outage affected services differently depending on users’ regions.
• Some platforms began partial recovery by 1:20 p.m. ET, but many users remained locked out.

Why we care. A Meta’s outage will cause disruption to ad delivery, reduce audience engagement, and impact time-sensitive campaigns, potentially leading to lost revenue. Frequent outages also raise concerns about platform reliability, which means it would be wise to diversify your ad strategy.

What they’re saying. Meta acknowledged the disruptions in a post on X (formerly Twitter):

• “We’re aware that a technical issue is impacting some users’ ability to access our apps. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and apologize for any inconvenience.”

What to watch. Meta has not provided specific details about the root cause of the outage or when services will be fully restored. Users should expect intermittent disruptions as the company works to resolve the issue.

Between the lines. The outages highlight Meta’s heavy reliance on its centralized infrastructure, which can lead to cascading failures affecting billions of users worldwide.