Facebook and Instagram experienced a brief service disruption Sunday night that prompted thousands of users across the United States to report problems. The number of reports fell sharply within roughly an hour, indicating that service had largely returned by late evening.
Reuters reported that outage tracker Downdetector began seeing a surge in complaints at about 8:55 p.m. Eastern time. At the peak, more than 17,000 Facebook users and more than 5,000 Instagram users had submitted reports of trouble using the services.
By around 10 p.m. Eastern, the volume of new reports had dropped substantially. Because Downdetector relies on reports submitted by users, its totals do not represent a complete count of everyone affected and can rise or fall quickly during a service disruption.
Meta had not publicly identified the cause of the outage in the initial reporting. Short disruptions can stem from a wide range of technical problems, including network configuration issues, software changes or failures affecting systems shared by multiple services.
The interruption is notable because Facebook and Instagram are used not only for personal communication but also by businesses, government agencies, emergency organizations and publishers. Even relatively short outages can interrupt advertising, customer service, social publishing and communication for organizations that depend heavily on the platforms.
Services appeared to be functioning normally again late Sunday. Users who continue to encounter problems can check Meta’s official status information and should be cautious about unofficial posts claiming to explain the cause before the company provides verified details.
