Instagram and Facebook Down? Thousands of Users Report Login, Feed, and Posting Issues During Global Meta Outage

Meta-owned Instagram and Facebook experienced a major global outage on July 19, leaving thousands of users unable to log in, refresh feeds, upload posts, or access messages. Here's everything you need to know.

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The popular social media sites Instagram and Facebook, owned by Meta, faced an unprecedented outage on Sunday, July 19, with many users being unable to log into their accounts, refresh their news feeds, post anything or utilize the messaging function.

Based on information from the outage tracking website Downdetector, reports started spiking significantly around 12:45 PM to 4:15 PM, which means that the problem is not localized and is not limited to just a particular country or internet service provider. In fact, based on the reports' trend, the outage looks like a backend service outage affecting the Meta network.

Many people flocked to the Downdetector website to find out if the service was indeed down, posting numerous complaints about application crashing, inability to log in, or loading issues.

The Outage Detector detected 4,808 user reports from Facebook in the United States at 07:46 GMT. Around 63% of the reported cases were of users unable to access Facebook via the website, while other problems included those related to the mobile application and login.

Instagram also saw a huge number of complaints regarding their application. At 08:18 GMT, around 2,829 user reports in the United States were made about Instagram application where some users reported crash of the application, inability to refresh feed and login issues.

The problem was not restricted to North America as reported in Singapore by Reuters. It was confirmed that there were access problems related to Facebook and Instagram applications in Singapore too.

Among other problems, Instagram crashes immediately upon startup was one of the most prevalent ones. In this case, people complained about receiving the "Instagram has stopped" message, while others were facing troubles with outdated cached feeds showing the "Couldn't refresh feed" error.

Another problem mentioned by several users was about direct messages not loading, disappearing chat lists, and non-working notifications. In addition, many people said that the application would start up but would shut down by itself.

Facebook users also faced similar problems. In particular, they could not log in into Facebook at all, or they were getting session expiration or endless verification errors. The problems did not just lie in accessing the accounts; those trying to post content, their Stories, and Reels encountered several failures due to the outage.

Instagram would open up in most situations, yet there were difficulties in loading new content. There were no Stories loaded, the feed was not updating, and the posts were either failing or hanging in an infinite loop. As of now, Meta hasn’t officially released a statement addressing the reason behind the disruption on Instagram and Facebook.

While the outage was receiving more complaints even at its peak time, based on the live outage map from Downdetector, it seemed like the amount of new reports was already decreasing, showing that the services were slowly stabilizing for some users.

However, due to some sporadic issues being reported from various locations, it might take some extra time to stabilize completely.

If you're still experiencing problems with Instagram or Facebook, there's likely little you can do until Meta fully restores its services. However, you can try a few basic troubleshooting steps:

• Check whether the outage is affecting other users through outage tracking platforms.

• Restart the Instagram or Facebook app.

• Clear the app cache (Android users).

• Ensure your internet connection is stable.

• Avoid repeatedly logging in or reinstalling the app while the outage is ongoing, as this usually won't resolve server-side issues.

System failure that involves the Meta platform is rarely seen, yet, when it happens, millions of people from all over the world get affected. In the most recent event of the system failure, users were unable to log in, use messages, load their newsfeed, and upload any kind of content on Instagram and Facebook.

While Meta has not yet come up with an explanation for what caused the outage, users with problems should be advised to wait until the company's servers fully restore.