Meta experienced a significant outage on Super Tuesday, causing Facebook, Instagram, and Threads to go offline

Yesterday the online world went into a frenzy when Meta’s A-list social apps—Facebook, Instagram, and Threads went offline. Users tried to crash this happening event, but all they got were fancy error messages reading “something went wrong,” leaving their VIP access cards useless.

After 10 a.m. ET speculation was everywhere on social media, with user-submitted issue trackers acting as the backstage pass to this unexpected techno-turmoil. Meanwhile, Meta’s own status page is sticking to its business attire, showing results only for the corporate accounts.

#Instagram, #Facebook and #Threads are currently down ???? pic.twitter.com/Zbpozhsn8F

— Alessandro Paluzzi (@alex193a) March 5, 2024

Meta’s communications director, Andy Stone, came forward declared, “We’re aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now.”

We're aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now.

— Andy Stone (@andymstone) March 5, 2024

The extent of the outage was unusual for Meta, considering the network’s size and built-in redundancies. Some users raised suspicions about the timing, coinciding with election day in several U.S. states. Meta’s suite of apps has played a significant role in elections, reaching 3.98 million monthly active users as of the end of last year. Meta had previously disabled political ads leading up to key elections to prevent potential influence.

Despite some reports of issues with other platforms like YouTube and X (formerly Twitter), Meta’s problems seemed distinct. X CEO Linda Yaccarino confirmed X was unaffected, and Elon Musk, owner of X, humorously acknowledged Meta’s outage.

Testing, testing… affirmative, everything is functioning smoothly here. ????

— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) March 5, 2024

If you’re reading this post, it’s because our servers are working

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 5, 2024

The Meta outage impacted not only consumer-facing apps but also internal systems, with employees reporting difficulty logging into work. While Meta did not confirm a hack, concerns were raised due to the timing. The issue was later resolved a couple of hours after it began, with Stone expressing apologies for any inconvenience caused.