Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp are coming back online after widespread ‘technical issues’

Instagram, Facebook, Threads and Messenger are coming back online after widespread “technical issues” took down many of Meta’s biggest apps for several hours Wednesday. “We’re 99% of the way there – just doing some last checks,” the company wrote in an update on X nearly four hours after first acknowledging the outages.

The company didn’t elaborate on the source of the issue, or when the problems might be resolved entirely. As of 4:30 PM PT Wednesday, Meta’s status dashboard still showed some “major disruptions” to its business and transparency tools, though other services were marked as “resolved” or “recovering.” Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads and Messenger seem to have largely recovered, though.

Earlier in the day, there were over 90,000 reports of issues for Facebook.com alone on Downdetector, as users across X and Bluesky reported problems loading and using Meta’s apps. For a while even Meta’s company site was displaying the text “This page isn’t available right now.” When Engadget first reached Meta for comment, the company pointed to a brief statement on X acknowledging that “a technical issue is impacting some users’ ability to access our apps.”

Meta last dealt with a major outage in March 2024 that prevented users from accessing its apps and services for two hours. That outage was attributed to a “technical issue” by Meta communications director Andy Stone, which is the same explanation Meta has offered so far today.

Update, December 11, 2024, 4:50PM ET: Added more details on outage length and impact on Meta enterprise tools.

Update, December11, 2024, 7:50 PM ET: Additional comments from Meta about the status of the outage were added.