Billions of users from all over the world lost access to their accounts, with automation systems repeatedly asking for double verifications.
The problem was registered in both applications and websites. In Portugal, at 4:35 pm, Facebook began accepting logins again.
DownDetector, which monitors online connection losses, showed at the beginning of the afternoon that more than 200,000 Americans were having problems with Facebook, with another 30,000 reporting the same with Instagram and around 8,000 with Messenger.
On Meta’s page, the company acknowledged “major disruptions” in the state of the Facebook platform. “We are aware of an issue affecting Facebook Login. Our engineering teams are actively seeking to resolve the issue as quickly as possible,” it said.
The message could also be read on the Graphic Platform, WhatsApp Business, the Marketing application and in advertising management.
The problem would be affecting Meta’s own administrative center and device manager. “We are currently experiencing disruptions impacting the workplace. We are investigating,” the website said in the middle of the afternoon.
A Facebook source confirmed that the company’s internal systems were down, which could justify the widespread collapse.
At 5pm in Portugal, Meta already presented messages “to be recovered” on Facebook, in Grafismo, in the Meta Business Suite, in ad management and in the Facebook and Instagram stores.
The Messenger platforms were already recovered, unlike the Administrative Center of the WhatsApp Business application, which remained with problems.
Millions affected
In addition to the United States, problems have been reported in Mexico, the United Kingdom, France, Portugal and other European areas, China and Australia.
Disturbances on Facebook and Messenger began to occur when users were kicked out of their accounts without warning and found themselves unable to log back in, with the system repeatedly asking for credentials again, even though they were being entered. correctly.
The Instagram feed started showing an error message, before access to the accounts was blocked.
In applications, the disruptions affected more than 70 percent of Facebook users, 64 percent of Instagram users and 50 percent of Messenger users,
DownDetector reported, at 4pm in Portugal, user problems also on YouTube, Discord, Google Play, Google and T Mobile.
North American users of Elon Musk’s X network, formerly Twitter, also reported to DownDetector website (46 percent), application (36 percent) and login (18 percent) problems.
In Portugal, neither X nor WhatsApp were experiencing major problems with access or operation. Google also worked normally.
Super Tuesday
More than 80,000 publications on the X network reported problems with Meta’s accounts, with many users expressing fears that their accounts had been diverted.
Elon Musk, the owner of X, responded to the messages with a brief post. “If you are reading this post, it is because our servers are working.”
Meta itself was in fact forced to use X to communicate with subscribers to its services.
“We know that people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this,” wrote Andy Stone, spokesman for the North American giant.
We’re aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) March 5, 2024
The disturbance led users to speculate whether it was a large-scale cyber attack, coinciding with the Super Tuesday of the North American primaries.
Three years ago, Facebook experienced an outage of more than seven hours, with losses estimated at $100 billion.
At that time, the failure was attributed to a faulty update that forced teams, reduced due to the Covid-19 pandemic, to travel to the place where it had been introduced to repair it.