On Tuesday, a technical problem resulted in widespread difficulties with logging in to Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, Threads and Messenger services for several hours.

Andy Stone, the head of communications for Meta, addressed the problems on X (formerly known as Twitter) and stated that the company “took prompt action to resolve the issue for all affected individuals, and we apologize for any inconvenience caused.”

Many individuals mentioned experiencing difficulties accessing their Facebook profiles and updates on the social media platform, as they found that both Threads and Instagram were not updating. However, WhatsApp, which is owned by the parent company Meta, seemed to be functioning normally.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency stated on Tuesday that they have no evidence of any direct connection to the election or any malicious cyber activity related to the outage.

The service interruption occurred right before the Thursday cutoff for Big Tech corporations to adhere to the European Union’s recently implemented Digital Markets Act. Meta is taking steps to follow these regulations, such as providing the option for users to keep their Facebook and Instagram accounts separate in order to prevent the combining of personal data for targeted online advertising. It is uncertain if the outage is related to any actions taken by Meta in regards to implementing the DMA.

In 2021, there was a widespread service disruption for Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp for several hours. The company attributed the outage to errors in modifications made to routers responsible for managing network traffic between its data centers. The following year, WhatsApp experienced a short period of downtime once again.

Source: wral.com