Kit Roberts
Users of Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram have been logged out en masse.
Down Detector is currently showing more than 239,000 reports that Facebook is down since around 3.00pm on March 5.
Meanwhile, Instagram currently has over 37,000 reports for the same period.
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Many users have been left puzzled after finding out that they had been logged out of their Facebook and Instagram accounts, and were unable to log back in.
So far nothing has been posted to either Facebook, Instagram, or Meta's social media pages on X (Twitter).
Users have flocked to X to check if the social media sites are down for everybody else.
Many people have posted amusing GIFs and images of enormous crowds or marathons as people swarm the platform for updates.
One person wrote: "When you realise both Facebook and Instagram are down and everybody rushing towards X."
Another added: "Not me changing my passwords on FB three times in five minutes thinking I got hacked only to find out that Facebook/IG are down for everyone."
A third commented: "I thought somebody hacked my Facebook."
Someone else posted: "So like everyone’s in X to verify if they the only one who got logged out in Facebook Messenger and Insta (Same)."
Messaging service WhatsApp, also owned by Meta, has had a small spike on Down Detector of just over 600 reports, but does not appear to be experiencing disruption to its services.
However, people have reported that they have been logged out of the Facebook Messenger app.
Users trying to log in to their accounts on Instagram are being shown an error message, which reads: "There was a problem logging you in, please try again soon."
At the time of writing, the topic #facebookdown has 185,000 posts on X, while #instagramdown has 131,000.
The cause of the outage is not currently known.
X owner Elon Musk has posted to the platform, joking: "If you’re reading this post, it’s because our servers are working."
Andy Stone, who works in communications at Meta, has posted a comment on his account on X acknowledging that services for Meta are down.
He wrote: "We're aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now."
Some users have reported that they are being told that their password is incorrect when they try to log back in.
UNILAD has contacted Meta for comment.