Meta’s Facebook and Instagram returned to normal service on Sunday after a brief outage affected thousands of users across the United States, according to outage-tracking website Downdetector.
Thousands of Users Report Facebook and Instagram Problems
The disruption began at around 8:55 p.m. ET and quickly triggered a surge in user reports.
Downdetector recorded more than 17,000 outage reports for Facebook at the peak of the disruption. Instagram also saw more than 5,000 reports of service problems.
The platform tracks outages by collecting status reports from users and other sources.
Services Largely Restored Within About an Hour
By approximately 10 p.m. ET, outage reports had dropped sharply, suggesting that Facebook and Instagram had largely recovered.
Users had reported problems accessing the platforms and using their services during the disruption.
Meta did not immediately provide an official explanation for the outage.
Actual Number of Affected Users May Differ
Downdetector figures are based largely on user-submitted reports. Therefore, the total number of people affected by the Facebook and Instagram outage may have been higher or lower than the figures shown on the website.
The reports are mainly used to identify spikes in service disruptions rather than provide an exact count of affected users.
Meta Platforms Have Faced Similar Outages
Facebook and Instagram also experienced service problems in July.
During that incident, Downdetector recorded as many as 4,808 reports involving Facebook and 2,829 reports involving Instagram.
The latest disruption was significantly larger based on the number of reports submitted during its peak, although service was restored relatively quickly.
