Facebook outage hits thousands worldwide – Ads Manager, Instagram Boost disrupted
Facebook users worldwide reported outages Tuesday afternoon after Meta’s platform began returning “Account Temporarily Unavailable” errors – with disruptions also hitting Ads Manager, Instagram Boost, and WhatsApp Business tools.
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Facebook "site issues" left thousands of users unable to access the platform on Tuesday, with reports that the Meta-owned social media platform was "temporarily unavailable" for account holders across multiple continents, along with "high disruptions" affecting Facebook Ads Manager, Instagram Boost, and WhatsApp's Cloud API for Business.
- Facebook users worldwide suddenly found themselves locked out as “Account Temporarily Unavailable” errors spread Tuesday afternoon.
- The disruption wasn’t limited to social feeds – Meta’s advertising tools also showed problems, potentially affecting companies running campaigns.
- Meta has not explained what caused the outage – but similar failures have taken Facebook and Instagram offline before.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
Outage spreads across multiple countries
The issues began after 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time, according to internet monitoring site Downdetector, with a status bar showingmore than 11,000 outage reports in the United States at its peak around 5:32 p.m.
Users in Canada, Brazil, Pakistan, Poland, Italy, and the UK also began reporting issues by the thousands around the same time.
About two-thirds of American users complained they were having issues with the website, while another 28% reported being unable to log in to their accounts, and the rest having problems with the Facebook app.
Instead of loading a Facebook feed or login page, most users saw this message on trying to load the desktop version:
"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.”
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Others reported Facebook services working on the mobile app, but running extremely slow.
"Is it just me, or is Facebook Web acting like it’s 2005 today?" one user posted on X.
"Trying to get some work done on the desktop version and keep getting 'Account Temporarily Unavailable.' Is anyone else facing this right now, or did I just break the internet?"
Meta confirms disruptions to advertising tools
Meta has not publicly explained the cause of Tuesday's outage as of publication, but a Meta status page update at 6:48 p.m. lists Facebook Ads Manager as reporting "High disruptions" starting just before 5:00 p.m.
"We are aware that some advertisers may be experiencing issues either accessing or viewing reporting for their ads. Our engineering teams are aware and are actively looking to resolve the issue as quickly as possible," the update said.
Instagram Boost and WhatsApp Business API were also shown with high disruptions.
Meta said it was aware that “some advertisers may be having trouble creating or editing their ads in Boost," and that Meta engineering teams are investigating WhatsApp issues “impacting the platform's Cloud API - Business Initiated Calling.”
Facebook Messenger appeared to be up and running with fewer than 300 users submitting reports to Downdetector during the same timeframe.
Meta outages have hit before
Ironically, two years ago to the day (depending on where you are located), Meta's Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger experienced a major global outage affecting over 600,000 users.
The March 5th, 2024 outage only lasted about two hours and was ultimately blamed on “technical issues.”
Unfortunately, Facebook users experiencing errors are unable to fix the issue themselves and must wait for Meta to resolve the outage.
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