Facebook, Instagram outage hits users in India after US disruption

Many users faced trouble running Meta's social media platforms Facebook and Instagram on Monday morning, September 21. A day earlier, on Sunday, reports had emerged of both platforms going down in the US. Following this, users in India and other countries also began complaining of problems. Downdetector, a website that tracks service outages, saw a sharp spike in complaints.

According to user complaints, Facebook and Instagram faced different kinds of problems. Some had trouble running the website, while others reported issues with the app and logging in. Facebook and Instagram are used by hundreds of millions of people every day. Amid the sudden disruption, users were trying to work out whether the problem was limited to their phone or internet connection, or whether the entire service was affected.

According to Downdetector's data, a large number of users reported problems with the service around the same time. However, these figures cannot be taken as an accurate count of users actually affected, since Downdetector's data is based only on reports submitted by users.

On Sunday, a large number of complaints about Facebook and Instagram had also come in from the US. By 9:11 pm, more than 17,000 complaints related to Facebook had been recorded in the US. Instagram also received more than 5,000 complaints about outages.

Following this, users in India and other countries also reported problems, sparking discussion on social media about whether Meta's platforms had suffered a major technical fault. However, the impact of the disruption was not uniform across every country and every user. For some, the website was working fine, while others faced problems with the app or logging in.

Downdetector tracks user complaints related to online services such as Facebook and Instagram. It shows how many more complaints are coming in at a particular time compared to a normal day. Facebook complaints are recorded under categories such as website, app and login. Instagram problems can similarly be logged separately under app, login, feed, posting and website. A sudden spike in complaints indicates that the service is facing more disruption than usual, though it does not confirm exactly how many hundreds of thousands or millions of users were actually affected.

Meta did not immediately give any official reason for the disruption. Meta did not respond when asked for comment. As a result, it remained unclear exactly what technical fault users faced on Facebook and Instagram. The company did not confirm any problem with its servers, network or other systems.