Update:The issue appears to have been resolved, with reports of issues with Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram dropping back to typical levels. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone did not comment on what caused the latest outage in the UK.
The original story follows below...
Hundreds of Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger users have been left unable to access the immensely-popular services due to a UK-wide outage. The issues started around 3pm GMT, but quickly spiralled.
Hundreds of users reported problems to the independent website Down Detector, which tracks outages to online services and smartphone apps. At the peak, over 1,000 reports every minute was logged by the Down Detector.
The problems seem to be centred in the UK, with some reports in mainland Europe and the United States.
All three services are owned by the same parent company, Meta, which headed up by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberga and was rebranded from "Facebook" in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
It's unclear what's causing the glitch with the platforms. WhatsApp, which is also owned and operated by the same parent company, does not seem to be experiencing the same problems.
Down Detector tracks issues with popular online services, like Facebook, by monitoring reports of problems across other social media platforms
DOWNDETECTOR
It comes less than a fortnight after an undisclosed “technical issue” brought down Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger for users across the globe.
During that global outage, spokesperson Andy Stone shared the news in a post on rival social network X, formerly Twitter. He tweeted: "Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience."
Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience. https://t.co/ybyyAZNAMn
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) March 5, 2024
During the outage earlier this month, parent company Meta quickly acknowledged the issues on its status dashboard, with almost all services marked as suffering from an "unknown" issue or "major disruptions".
According to some reports, internal systems used by employees at Facebook, Messenger and Instagram were also been hit with the latest outage.
During the outage, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone posted on X, formerly known as Twitter: “We’re aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now.”