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On Tuesday night, a digital frenzy unfolded as platforms owned by Meta, including Facebook and Instagram, as well as Threads, Messenger and some WhatsApp users, grappled with significant outages.
Starting around 8:56 p.m., users faced difficulties loading content on their feeds, encountering issues with app functionality, login processes, and content uploading. This led users to turn to 'X' for confirmation of the widespread issue and, naturally, to create memes about it.
The Meta outage quickly became a viral topic on Elon Musk's 'X' platform, with numerous users reporting sudden logouts from Meta-owned social media platforms. Phrases like "Cyberattack," "Mark Zuckerberg," and "Instagram Facebook Down" surged to the top of trending topics.
Musk himself took advantage of the situation to showcase the "superiority" of his platform, while playfully poking fun at the outage, as seen in one of his posts: "If you’re reading this post, it’s because our servers are working."
But this was just the beginning. The influx of memes kept people entertained as they waited for services to be restored, injecting humor and jokes into the situation. Downdetector, a website tracking outages, recorded over 300,000 Facebook outages and more than 47,000 reports of Instagram downtime worldwide.
Andy Stone from Meta addressed concerns on 'X,' offering reassurance that solutions were in progress.
The outage persisted for approximately an hour, after which all apps resumed normal operation.
A statement was issued, expressing regret for any inconvenience caused and confirming the swift resolution of the issue. "We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologise for any inconvenience."
The financial repercussions of this widespread disruption should not be overlooked, as it not only disconnected billions of users but also dealt a significant blow to the company, according to experts.
Meta's share price initially dipped by 1.5 per cent as issue reports flooded in, later sliding further by 1.6 per cent.
Experts have now revealed the staggering financial toll on Zuckerberg due to this colossal downtime. Dan Ives, managing director of Wedbush Securities, disclosed that Mark Zuckerberg suffered a loss of about $100 million in income on Tuesday as a result of the global outage of his platforms.
Netizens Fear Hacking, Cyber Attack
Hundreds of people took to microblogging site X reporting about Facebook and Instagram outage.
One user wrote, “Is meta down or am I being hacked? my instagram isn’t loading and my facebook is also “session logged out".
Another said, “I thought my Facebook and Instagram got hacked for a second."
"Me coming to twitter to see if #INSTAGRAM is down once again," another user tweeted.
An X user 'Fram Freeman' claimed, “I've been scrambling changing passwords 3 times thinking I'm racing the hackers like in a movie lol."
Meanwhile, a user names Fawad Rehman posted, "Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp are down. #CyberAttack".
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