Meta down: Facebook and Instagram hit by hours-long outage
Meta’s social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, experienced a major outage on Friday, temporarily disrupting access for users, Qazinform News Agency reports.
The disruption began around 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time, affecting several Meta-owned services, including Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. WhatsApp appeared largely unaffected during the incident.
At first, the scale of the disruption was difficult to assess as outage-monitoring site Downdetector also appeared to be experiencing technical problems.
In total, the outage lasted about four hours. Facebook and Messenger services were restored within about an hour, while Instagram took longer to fully recover.
We're coming back, though it may take a bit of time for everything to be fully back to normal. https://t.co/bmtG1Mrrr7
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) June 12, 2026
Meta’s Vice President of Communications, Andy Stone, was the only company representative to issue public updates during the outage. In a post on X, he confirmed the disruption around 10 a.m. and later added that services were gradually returning, though full stabilization would take time.
Earlier, Qazinform News Agency reported that hackers hijacked more than 20,000 Instagram accounts via a Meta AI flaw.
