Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Threads, the social media apps owned by Meta Platforms, experienced a temporary outage on Monday, according to Downdetector. The outage lasted for over an hour and affected thousands of users. Instagram had the highest number of reported issues, with over 14,000 users facing difficulties accessing the platform.
Facebook and WhatsApp also experienced disruptions, with around 7,000 and 2,700 users reporting problems, respectively. Even Meta’s latest app, Threads, faced an outage, with approximately 470 users encountering issues accessing the app.
Downdetector, a service that monitors outages by gathering
status reports from various sources, including user-submitted error reports,
indicated that the outage discussed in the previous article could have impacted
a larger user base. While the reported numbers reflect the users who reported
issues, it is possible that a greater number of individuals were affected by
the outage.
Meta did not provide an immediate response to a query from
Reuters regarding the outages experienced. Additionally, during an Australian
inquiry on foreign interference, a Meta executive revealed that the company
intends to designate government-affiliated accounts on its Twitter-like
platform Threads.
During a Senate inquiry on foreign interference, Josh
Machin, Meta’s head of public policy for Australia, stated that Meta plans to
implement labels for government-affiliated accounts on its Twitter-like
platform Threads. Machin mentioned that areas such as labeling state-affiliated
media and fact-checking are areas of value and the company aims to develop them
quickly. This disclosure comes shortly after the launch of Threads, which is
considered similar to Twitter.
Twitter had removed tags from government-affiliated accounts
since Elon Musk took it private in 2022, which resulted in complaints regarding
the impact on users’ media literacy.