It's safe to say that Meta had a rough Friday morning, with users unable to access Facebook and WhatsApp shortly before 10AM ET.
The initial issues appear to be concentrated on WhatsApp, where users were reporting that the app's main screen failed to load. However, Facebook ended up bearing the brunt of Meta's issues this morning – I encountered the "something went wrong" error, then the classic logo, and then an empty feed that wasn't loading for a while. Down Detector reports quickly spiked to over 100,000 for Facebook issues and then fell to under 5,000 in the hours after
We tracked the disruptions affecting Facebook, WhatsApp, and other Meta platforms in the live blog below, but the issue has since been resolved, with Meta's status page indicating a resolution has been implemented.
A look at Down Detector
It's clear that many of Meta's platforms are having some issues currently, as you can see at the top of Down Detector in the United States.
Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram are at the top of the list, with the first currently leading with over 120,000 reports.
Right now, I still can't get Facebook on the desktop to load; parts of the interface appear, like the main sidebars, but the actual content is missing. Now, I'm in New Jersey experiencing this, but my TechRadar colleagues in the UK are seeing a similar situation, with some posts appearing and then the feed appearing blank.
Let me know what you're seeing in the comments down below.
It does appear that Meta's engineers and other teams might have figured out the issue pretty quickly, though, as Facebook is again loading for a few of my colleagues, and reports on Down Detector are starting to drop for issues with Facebook and Messenger.
Facebook does appear to be recovering a bit. I was able to load the homepage and saw a few posts in the feed, but when I tried to click into one, I just saw the logo centered and Meta at the bottom, so it appears there might still be some issues with parts of the platform.
Let me know what you're seeing in the comments below.
On iOS, the Facebook app is still experiencing issues, mainly with the top story bar appearing empty and the feed serving older stories. For my colleague Josephine Watson in the UK, she's getting a 'Try Again' error at the top of her feed.
Meta confirms four issues with 'business products'
While Facebook is recovering and loading in a much closer to normal form than what we're seeing closer to the top of the hour, Meta's business products status page is showing an active disruption for 'Facebook Ads Manager,' 'Messenger API for Instagram,' 'Messenger Platform,' and 'WhatsApp Business Platform.'
Suffice it to say, it's clear that the issues affecting Meta span platforms – Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp included.
Down Detector reports are dropping
While reported issues with Facebook on Down Detector were over 120,000 nearly an hour ago, that number has fallen pretty sharply as the service has begun to recover. In the last update at 10:47 AM ET on Down Detector, Facebook reports were at 12,286. It's worth noting that it slightly spiked back up, but it's still a massive drop from the height of this issue.
Even so, 12,000 reports are certainly higher than what we normally see on a normal day with Facebook, with no issues.
