Millions of users worldwide were unable to access Meta’s social media and messaging platforms on Friday after a widespread outage disrupted Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, prompting a surge in complaints across outage-tracking websites.

Reports of problems began appearing around midday in several regions, with users saying they were unable to refresh feeds, send messages, log in to accounts or load content across Meta’s services. Outage-monitoring website Downdetector showed a sharp increase in incident reports as the disruption spread globally, according to reports.

“We’re aware people are currently having trouble accessing ​our services. We’re working ​on it,” the company’s spokesperson, Andy ⁠Stone, said in a ​post on X.

The outage affected three of the world’s most widely used online platforms. Facebook and Instagram are among the largest social networks globally, while WhatsApp is a critical communications service for consumers and businesses across many countries.

Users flocked to alternative platforms to confirm whether the services were down, a pattern seen during previous Meta outages. Social media discussions quickly trended as people shared screenshots of error messages and failed login attempts.

Market participants and digital advertisers closely monitor such outages because Meta’s platforms play a central role in online advertising, customer communications and content distribution globally. Any prolonged disruption can affect businesses that rely on the services to reach customers and process inquiries.

The disruption recalled several high-profile outages in recent years, including a global outage in March 2024 and another major incident in 2021 that knocked Meta’s services offline for hours. Those outages affected hundreds of thousands of users and highlighted the dependence of businesses, advertisers and consumers on the company’s platforms.