Massive global outage hits FB, Instagram, Messenger

Facebook, Instagram and Messenger have gone down today (March 5) in what appears to be a huge outage at parent company Meta.

Users found themselves unable to load the apps or websites as normal. On Facebook, affected users found they had been logged out and were unable to get on, while Instagram refused to work at all, reports British media outlet The Independent.

The users of Facebook, Instagram and Messenger across the globe reportedly suddenly got logged out from their accounts.

"Facebook is down for required maintenance right now, but you should be able to get back on within a few minutes," Facebook shows when someone tries to log back in.

According to Downdetector, the problem is global.

"Both mobile and Website are logged out and I can't get change my password. I thought I got hacked," a user wrote in Downdetector's comment feed.

"Facebook is indeed down," another user wrote.

The warnings about being logged out led to widespread concern among users that their accounts had been hacked, and a variety of concerned phrases trended on Twitter/X. But the error messages appear to be the result of problems with Facebook’s login system, not a hack or cyber attack.

Meta does not run official status pages for its consumer products. And it was yet to post any update on the outage on its official accounts, such as those on Twitter/X.