Meta Facebook, Instagram, Messenger Outage Hits Millions

Millions of users worldwide were locked out of Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger on Friday, June 12, as a widespread technical outage disrupted Meta's core social media platforms. The global disruption, which began around 2:30 p.m. UK time (9:30 a.m. Eastern Time), saw users abruptly logged out and unable to sign back in, encountering error messages and blank feeds.

The outage severely impacted Facebook's website and mobile app, its Messenger service, and significant portions of Instagram. Users reported being met with messages such as "This page isn't available right now," "Something went wrong," or "Query error." Many initially feared their accounts had been hacked. Outage-tracking websites like Downdetector recorded a massive spike in reports, with hundreds of thousands of complaints logged globally at the peak. Data indicated problems across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Philippines, Australia, India, and multiple European and Middle Eastern nations.

Meta acknowledged the issue. Company spokesperson Andy Stone stated on X that Meta was "aware people are currently having trouble accessing our services" and was "working on it." The company did not...