Science & Technology
Facebook hit by global outage as users report widespread access problems
Thousands of users turned to other social media platforms, including X, to confirm they were not alone, with “Facebook down” quickly becoming a trending topic in several regions.
Facebook users around the world experienced widespread disruption on Sunday after the social media platform suffered a major outage that left many unable to access their accounts or use key features.
According to outage-tracking service Downdetector, reports of problems surged sharply overnight, jumping from just a handful of reports initially to millions by noon on Sunday (Kabul time).
Many users reported being unable to log into Facebook, while others who were already signed in encountered an error message stating: “Account Temporarily Unavailable. Your account is currently unavailable due to a site issue. We expect this to be resolved shortly. Please try again in a few minutes.”
The outage appeared to affect Facebook’s desktop platform most severely, although users also reported problems with the mobile app, including uploading photos and videos, viewing content and sending messages through Messenger.
Thousands of users turned to other social media platforms, including X, to confirm they were not alone, with “Facebook down” quickly becoming a trending topic in several regions.
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, had not issued an official explanation for the disruption at the time of publication. It also remained unclear whether the outage affected users in all regions equally or whether other Meta-owned services, including Instagram and WhatsApp, experienced related issues.
Downdetector, which tracks online service disruptions through user-submitted reports, said the spike suggested a significant global outage. The number of reports on the platform does not necessarily represent the total number of affected users.
While outages of this scale are relatively uncommon, Facebook has experienced several high-profile service interruptions in recent years, affecting millions of users worldwide.
Meta is expected to provide further details once engineers identify the cause of the disruption. Users are advised to avoid repeatedly attempting to log in or changing account settings while the issue is being resolved, as the problem appears to stem from Facebook’s systems rather than individual accounts.