Facebook and Instagram experienced a global outage on Wednesday afternoon, affecting users primarily in Europe and North America. The disruption, which began at around 4pm according to Down Detector, impacted computers, smartphones, and apps, though Messenger appeared unaffected.
By 6pm, the number of reported problems had returned to normal levels. A Facebook spokesperson stated: 'Earlier today, a networking issue caused some people to have trouble accessing Facebook services. We quickly investigated and started restoring access within about an hour, and we have nearly fixed the issue for everyone. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.'
During the outage, some users saw a message indicating Facebook was down for maintenance. The hashtag #FacebookDown trended globally on Twitter. The Guardian understands the issues were not thought to be caused by suspicious activity.
Facebook, which acquired Instagram for $1bn in 2012, has not provided an official reason for the outage but expects the issues to be resolved shortly.
