Facebook has gone down in a huge outage.
Problems were reported across Facebook’s services, including Messenger, and appeared to be affecting users right across the world.
The issues began around 6.45am local pacific time, or 2.45pm in the UK.
It is still unclear the cause of the issues or when Facebook will be back online.
Follow below for the latest updates on one of the biggest online outages of recent times.
Meta 'aware' of problems
15:39 , Andrew Griffin
Meta is aware of the problems and working on it, says its communications chief Andy Stone. (He posted this before the problems started getting better, and so maybe some of the work he references is coming good.)
We're aware people are currently having trouble accessing our services. We're working on it.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) June 12, 2026
Facebook appears to be coming back
15:38 , Andrew Griffin
Anecdotally, service appears to be on the way to being restored. Users are able to open Facebook – though not everyone is finding that it is back to normal just yet.
Facebook appears to be coming back
15:32 , Andrew Griffin
Anecdotally, service appears to be on the way to being restored. Users are able to open Facebook – though not everyone is finding that it is back to normal just yet.
Previous problems have taken Meta down for hours
15:31 , Andrew Griffin
It’s rare that Facebook goes down. But the impact of even short outages can be dramatic, given that 3.6 billion people use its apps each day.
They have not always been short. In 2021, for instance, Meta’s platforms went down for about seven hours.
That problem was later traced to a single wrong command that took down the “backbone” of the services. You can read more about that outage below.
A single wrong command took down Facebook’s ‘backbone’ causing the global outage
Previous problems have taken Meta down for hours
15:28 , Andrew Griffin
It’s rare that Facebook goes down. But the impact of even short outages can be dramatic, given that 3.6 billion people use its apps each day.
They have not always been short. In 2021, for instance, Meta’s platforms went down for about seven hours.
That problem was later traced to a single wrong command that took down the “backbone” of the services. You can read more about that outage below.
A single wrong command took down Facebook’s ‘backbone’ causing the global outage
Facebook goes down in huge outage
15:26 , Andrew Griffin
Here’s the full story on the outage, which looks to be one of the most significant of recent times.
Facebook goes down in huge outage
15:25 , Andrew Griffin
Here’s the full story on the outage, which looks to be one of the most significant of recent times.
Instagram and WhatsApp also hit by outage
15:24 , Andrew Griffin
Here’s our story on the effects of the outage on other products, Instagram and WhatsApp. They are less broken – but still suffering.
Instagram and WhatsApp down: Websites not working amid widespread Meta outage
Other Meta products seem to be working – mostly
15:12 , Andrew Griffin
For the most part, other Meta services such as Instagram and WhatsApp appear to be working as normal. That is despite the fact that they share services, behind the scenes.
The only exception is the web versions of both Instagram and WhatsApp. They appear not to be loading.
Visitors to both saw error messages or pages that failed to load as normal.
Facebook shows old-school error page
15:10 , Andrew Griffin
Visitors to the Facebook website are met by a relatively old-school and low-tech error message indicating that the page is down.
Hello and welcome...
15:07 , Andrew Griffin
... to The Independent’s live coverage of a widespread outage at Facebook.
