Facebook, Instagram and other platforms run by Meta Platforms were down for many users Tuesday because of what the social media company called a technical issue.
The website Downdetector, which tracks outages, spiked with hundreds of thousands of reports from users unable to access either Facebook or Instagram at about 10 a.m. ET Tuesday morning. The reports slowed within an hour. The company called the issue resolved around noon ET.
"Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services," Meta spokesperson Andy Stone wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter. "We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience."
Downdetector also showed outages for Threads and the Messenger app earlier in the day.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from IBD on the exact cause of the outage.
Meta Stock Appears Unmoved By Outage
The company's last major outage came in 2021. Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other services were down for several hours on Oct. 4 of that year. The company later explained that the outage was caused by errant configuration changes to the routers it uses to coordinate traffic between data centers.
Meanwhile, Meta's decision to provide an update for users through X did not go unnoticed by X's owner, Elon Musk. Musk has an ongoing rivalry with Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg.
"If you're reading this post, it's because our servers are working," Musk wrote on X, as Facebook and Instagram users were still seeing outages.
On the stock market today, Meta stock is down 1.25% at 491.96 in recent action. The stock was already trading lower prior to reports of the outages.
