Meta’s Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram social media platforms were down for thousands of users worldwide, including Pakistan, on Wednesday night, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.
Internet tracking monitor NetBlocks also confirmed at 11:54pm that Meta platforms were currently experiencing international outages, adding that the incident was not related to country-level internet disruptions or filtering.
Downdetector showed that 2,222 reports were received about WhatsApp from users in Pakistan at 11:04pm, indicating problems with the service.
A Dawn.com staffer was also unable to connect to the WhatsApp Web service, which showed an error message: “Service unavailable. We’re having trouble connecting to WhatsApp. Please try again in a few minutes.”
Downdetector also indicated problems with Facebook as per user reports with 976 reports from Pakistan at 11:08pm.
The same issue persisted with Instagram with 1,217 reports from Pakistan at 11:07pm.
The issue was observed in the United States as well. There were more than 105,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Facebook and over 70,000 with Instagram, in an outage that started around 12:50pm ET.
WhatsApp was also down for more than 12,000 users, according to Downdetector.com.
Some Facebook and Instagram users posted on rival platform X that they were encountering an error that said “something went wrong” and that Meta was working to get it fixed.
Meta said it was aware that a technical issue was impacting “some users’ ability” to access its apps. “We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and apologise for any inconvenience,” the company said in a post on X.
A similar message from Instagram said on X: “We know there’s a technical issue impacting some people’s ability to access Instagram.
“We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and are sorry for any inconvenience.”
A message by WhatsApp said on X it was aware of “some issues” in accessing the platform. “We’re actively working on a solution and starting to see a return to normal for most people. We expect things to be back to normal shortly.”
Hundreds of thousands of Facebook and Instagram users were impacted globally for more than two hours early this year by an outage that was caused by a technical issue.
The platforms faced another outage in October when services were largely restored within an hour.
