Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp back online after brief outage impacts users globally

Facebook and its apps Instagram and Whatsapp experienced issues Friday that briefly resulted in connection trouble and the inability to load newsfeeds for many users around the world.

The website DownDetector, which shares user-reported issues on websites and other platforms, showed thousands of complaints regarding the Facebook-owned apps around 1:30 p.m. ET. The largest issue appeared to be centered on Instagram with more than 123,000 people reporting problems with the app at one point, though thousands more reported issues with other Facebook products.

The vast majority of Instagram users, about 70%, reported issues loading their newsfeed, according to the site. Many Whatsapp messenger users reported connection trouble, along with users of Facebook.

It indicated that Instagram outages were reported in the U.S., and in countries across Europe and in Central and South America.

In a statement, Facebook said "a technical issue caused people to have trouble accessing some Facebook services."

"We resolved this issue for everyone, and we apologize for any inconvenience," the company added.

FILE - This photo illustration shows several social media app icons displayed on a smartphone. (Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

WhatsApp also confirmed issues had been resolved with its messaging app on Twitter.

"Thanks for your patience, that was a long 45 minutes but we are back," the company wrote.

Facebook, which acquired Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, has faced big outages before. Both Facebook and Instagram had widespread outages and access problems on Thanksgiving 2019.

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This story was reported from Cincinnati.