In a brief period of disruption, social media giant Meta Platforms experienced an outage on Friday, affecting the services of its popular apps Facebook and Instagram, as well as its messaging platform WhatsApp.
However, the company swiftly worked to resolve the issues, and after a little over two hours, services were restored for users worldwide.
During the outage, thousands of users encountered difficulties accessing Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, with nearly 20,000 individuals reporting issues, according to the outage-tracking website Downdetector.com.
However, Meta Platforms responded promptly to the situation, taking to Twitter to announce that it was actively working to address the problem.
As time progressed, the number of outage reports significantly decreased, indicating progress in resolving the technical hiccups.
While Downdetector provides valuable insights by aggregating user-submitted errors, it is important to note that the actual number of affected users may have been larger than reported.
In a positive turn of events, the service disruption was not widespread, particularly in countries where most users experienced no difficulties accessing Facebook and Instagram throughout the incident.
In parallel news, Meta Platforms recently reversed a policy that was implemented to combat the proliferation of COVID-19-related misinformation on its platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.
As social media platforms faced mounting pressure to address the spread of false claims about vaccines and pandemic-related information, they introduced stringent measures.
However, Meta Platforms decided to reassess its approach in July 2022 and sought the opinion of its independent oversight board, considering the availability of more reliable sources of information and the increased public awareness surrounding COVID-19.