It was a big one. On Friday, a host of Meta’s social services were down, from Facebook and Instagram to Ads Manager. If you look at Downdetector, they had 93,000 or so Facebook complaints in the books by 9:45 am ET. You could hear about it from India and elsewhere, which only adds to the talk about reliability.
What you’re up against
You can’t get in. Or if you do, you get a session expired message or are locked out for no reason. Some say their feeds won’t come up, the app won’t budge, or a feature is just gone when you need it.
It’s hit and miss. The site might work for one person but the app is a no-go. Over in India, some have been able to get back on Facebook, though the whining about Instagram hasn’t let up.
How big it is and where it came from
Don’t think this is a local problem. We have reports coming in from the US, Canada, Singapore, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and more. That kind of spread means it’s a service-wide issue, not your connection.
The numbers on Downdetector took off around 7 pm IST. It was so bad that for a while, you’d get a 404 error even on the tracker’s own pages for Instagram and Messenger. We saw that as of 10 am ET.
Where Meta stands
They put out a word on it on June 12. Andy Stone, a spokesperson for the company, was on X to let us know: “We’re aware people are currently having trouble accessing our services. We’re working on it.”
But as of now, there’s no word on what caused it or when we can expect full service. They haven’t broken down which areas or systems were in the crosshairs either.
Why it’s an issue today
These are the tools of the trade for a lot of creators and advertisers. With Ads Manager in the mix, you’re not just talking about a personal account being down; you’re looking at business operations that have been scuttled.
When you have a three-way takedown of Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, it has a way of changing behaviour. People want to know what’s going on in real time, and a lot of them flocked to X for answers. That puts a spotlight on Meta to make it right in a hurry.
Brands are watching, too. When you’re running a campaign by the hour, even a brief hiccup can unnerve the whole process between your team, your agency and the client. Do it enough and you start to have questions about how they handle it.
In the meantime
For the most part, the problem is with their servers, not your phone or your Wi-Fi. You can run through the motions, but you’ll have to be patient while they put the pieces back together:
– Go ahead and restart the app, log back in
– See if there’s an update for the app
– Put down the Wi-Fi and try mobile data
– If it’s still giving you grief, put it down for a bit and come back to it
What to keep an eye on
You’ll know we’re in the clear when Meta says why it happened and the new reports on Downdetector start to tail off. We should also see the web and app sides of things behaving themselves again.
Then there’s the login screen. Once the backend is in order, you shouldn’t be met with those “session expired” pop-ups or random lockouts. And for the business side, Ads Manager should be open for business once more.
Looking at the competition
Size is a double-edged sword for Meta. One thing goes wrong and it ripples through to social, messaging and ads. So Friday was as much a test of their name as it was of their tech.
Every time they have a wobble, the rivals pick up the slack. The volume of posts on X shows how fast the audience moves for the latest. How they fix this, and how well they explain it, will go a long way in keeping the trust of their users and the people who put ad money in their pocket.
We’re following this. More to come as we have it.
