• by Ray Schultz , March 20, 2024

Publishers who saw traffic from Facebook decline on Wednesday afternoon probably were victims of a worldwide outage suffered by Meta, affecting Facebook, Instagram and Messenger.  

The outage apparently started around 10 a.m. ET, peaked within the hour, and seemed to be totally over by late afternoon, according to Downdetector. It hit the U.S. and the UK, and also impacted Europe and Asia, the Daily Mail reported.   

The most reported problems were app (79%), website (21%) and log-in (6%), according to Downdetector. 

Users were not happy. 

"Images not loading, just text descriptions. If I get too far down on my news feed, I get that throbbing look like it is trying to load."

“My featured photos are gone...can't see them on my friends' pages, either, plus no stories are showing up on the app version (can see them on my PC),” wrote another.  

In one case, the person complained of not having service since 9 a.m. on March 5. 

However, one correspondent stated, “Okay, Facebook seems to be up and running again on Chrome for Windows Desktop. Search function is working again, and all the prior saved searches are back. Online Messenger status is showing once more, and Cover Photos are showing. Notifications are back as well."