Whatsapp and Instagram restored after Meta outages

Instagram and WhatsApp are back online after a massive global outage that affected several Meta-owned apps on Wednesday.

Facebook has yet to confirm whether all of its issues have been resolved.

“Thanks for bearing with us! We’re 99% of the way there, just doing some final checks. Apologies to those affected by the outage,” Meta, the apps’ owner, told X.

More than 22,000 people reported problems with Facebook as of Wednesday evening and more than 18,000 struggled to use WhatsApp, according to outage tracking site Downdetector.

Problems with apps were reported in the UK, parts of Europe, Asia, Australia, South America and the US.

“And we’re back, happy chatting!” WhatsApp said to X.

“And ddd we’re back, sorry for the wait and thanks for joining us,” said Instagram.

The outages began around 18:00 GMT on Wednesday, according to Downdetector. Their figures are based on outage reports and the actual number of affected users may vary considerably.

Shortly after users reported problems, Meta said it was aware of a “technical issue” that was “affecting some users’ ability to access our apps” and said it was working to fix things as soon as possible.

Various issues were reported, such as not being able to use the apps at all or channels not being updated for certain users.

“We are aware of some issues accessing WhatsApp. We are actively working on a solution and are starting to see a return to normal for most people. We hope things will return to normal soon,” WhatsApp told the same time

Meta’s platforms are some of the most popular in the world. Facebook has over three billion monthly active users.

The biggest disruption Meta experienced was in 2021 when founder Mark Zuckerberg apologized for the disruption caused.

On that occasion, the services of Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram went down for almost six hours.