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Millions of users worldwide found themselves unable to access Meta’s suite of social media platforms on Tuesday, as the tech giant wrestled with what it described as a “technical issue.” The sudden outage has sparked frustration and speculation, leaving people disconnected from their digital communities as engineers scramble to restore services.
With three of the world’s most popular apps—Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—suddenly offline, millions of users flocked to X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday evening to air grievances and share updates. The outage, which affected Mark Zuckerberg’s flagship platforms, served as a stark reminder of just how reliant the world has become on his digital ecosystem.
Data from Downdetector painted a chaotic picture for Meta’s platforms, with Instagram facing over 70,000 outage complaints and Facebook surpassing 100,000—both far above average. The deluge of reports highlighted the scale of disruption that left users scrambling for alternative communication channels.
Read also: Ireland Slams €91m Fine On Meta For Password Security Breach
“We’re aware that a technical issue is impacting some users’ ability to access our apps,” Meta said in an X post. “We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and apologize for any inconvenience.”
Facebook’s latest meltdown mirrors incidents from May 2024 and October 2021, when technical errors—not hacking attempts—were blamed for the chaos. In those instances, users trying to log in were repeatedly locked out, and Instagram’s mobile users helplessly stared at feeds that wouldn’t refresh.Facebook, the undisputed leader in global social networking, attracts over three billion active users every month. Instagram, with its focus on imagery and short-form content, is not far behind, with a robust user base of 1.35 billion, according to the latest numbers.
X, formerly Twitter, saw a spike in online activity as users were locked out of the Meta sites.
According to Statista, as of 2021, Nigeria had about 33 million active social media users with WhatsApp being the most popular platform used in the country, with over 90 million users.
About 61.4 per cent of Nigerian social media users use X, 86.2 per cent use Facebook, 81.6 per cent use YouTube, 73.1 per cent use Instagram, and 67.2 per cent use Facebook Messenger.
