Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta Platforms, addressed the recent outages that impacted the company’s popular social media apps, including Facebook and Instagram, during the Meta Connect event held in Menlo Park, California, on September 25, 2024.
On Wednesday, a widespread outage began around 9:57 a.m. PST, preventing many users from accessing key services, such as Threads, WhatsApp, and Messenger. Reports from the internet-monitoring website Downdetector indicated that at the peak of the disruption, over 100,000 Facebook users experienced issues logging in at 10:11 a.m. PST.
In response, Meta took to social media platform X to acknowledge the technical issue, stating, “We are aware that a technical issue is impacting some users’ ability to access our apps.” The company promised to resolve the issues swiftly and apologized for any disruptions this may have caused.
Further updates throughout the day indicated that the problems persisted, with Meta’s afternoon post revealing they were “99% of the way there – just doing some last checks.” Soon after, Instagram confirmed its services were back online, stating, “Andddd we’re back — sorry for the wait, and thanks for bearing with us.”
It’s worth noting that this was not an isolated incident, as Meta’s apps underwent a similar outage for about two hours in March 2024, coinciding with the Super Tuesday U.S. presidential primaries.
Overall, while service disruptions can be frustrating, it is encouraging to see Meta responding quickly and working to restore service, demonstrating their commitment to user experience. The company’s transparency in communicating progress updates reflects their determination to address technical challenges and enhance app reliability moving forward.