Meta Platforms Experience Global Outage Affecting Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp

Meta-owned platforms Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger experienced a widespread global outage on June 23, 2026, disrupting services for users across multiple continents. The outage began around 5:00 p.m. EDT (10:00 p.m. UTC) and affected users in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Pakistan, Romania, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Israel, and other regions. Downdetector tracked over 21,000 reports for Instagram and approximately 20,000 for Facebook, reflecting the scale of the disruption.

Users reported multiple service failures across the affected platforms. On Instagram and Facebook, users encountered feed loading issues, failed content refreshes, error messages, and login failures. Some users experienced repeated "something went wrong" error loops or were abruptly logged out without warning. Instagram users noted that while some parts of the application loaded, they would subsequently display error messages. Facebook users reported slow performance and inaccessible pages. WhatsApp users additionally reported difficulties sending and receiving messages, accessing accounts, and using audio and video features, with media files failing to download properly.

The outage was notable for its inconsistent impact across user accounts and devices. Some users could access applications normally while others experienced persistent errors, and accounts that were unable to load content on one profile sometimes functioned properly when switching to an alternative account. This variability led to user confusion about whether individual accounts had been compromised or if the issue was platform-wide.

Meta did not publicly acknowledge the outage or provide information about its cause or expected resolution time as of the time reports were published. The company's silence contrasted with user speculation on social media, where some suggested potential server crashes or technical failures. This incident marked the second major outage affecting Meta's platforms in less than two weeks, following a June 12 outage that had generated over 113,000 reports for Facebook at its peak.