Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook go down as huge Meta outage takes apps offline

Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook appear to have briefly gone offline in a major outage at parent company Meta.

The technical problems followed a similar widespread outage around a month ago. This week, users also reported problems at Instagram and its Threads microblogging platform.

Meta had not responded to the issues at the time of publication. It is often late to announce issues – and usually does not give any information about how or why they happened.

But tracking website Down Detector showed a vast number of reports of issues at all three major Meta apps on Wednesday, 3 April. Users reported problems sending messages and getting online.

Soon after it had started, however, users appeared to be able to get back online. Some reported that the platforms were slow as they became available again.