On Tuesday evening, both Facebook and Instagram faced extensive outages in India and numerous other global regions. Users encountered significant issues with logging in, as many were unexpectedly logged out of their accounts. Furthermore, numerous users encountered difficulties refreshing Instagram pages and were prompted to reset their passwords. These disruptions commenced around 8:30 pm, impacting tens of thousands of users as per reports on outage tracking website Downdetector.com. Facebook received over 300,000 outage reports, while Instagram had more than 20,000. The outage also extended to WhatsApp Business, with approximately 200 reports of issues. Meta, the parent company overseeing these platforms, acknowledged the problem and reassured users that they were actively addressing it.
Concerns regarding hacking and cyber attacks spread among netizens, prompting widespread speculation and confusion about the cause of the outage on social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter). Many users humorously questioned whether they were being targeted by hackers, underscoring the widespread impact and uncertainty surrounding the situation.