Facebook, WhatsApp, other Meta apps restored after long outage

Meta — the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram — announced the problem was "fixed," with all apps back up and operating in the early hours of Saturday after an outage impacted users.

Thousands of people worldwide were impacted by the outage, with almost 20,000 reporting difficulties accessing Facebook, Instagram, and Meta's messaging service WhatsApp.

The social media platforms were also inaccessible in Pakistan from around midnight till roughly 3:00am.

According to Downdetector.com, the applications were down around the same hours, with 49% of users unable to send messages on WhatsApp, 32% unable to send audio notes, and 19% unable to use the programme at all.

Meanwhile, 42% Instagram users had trouble using the app, 35% couldn't log in, while 23% couldn't load its website. At least 46% Facebook users were not able to log into the app, 34% couldn't access its website, and 20% experienced server connection issues.

Outage reports, according to Reuters, had come down to less than 500 as of 22:30 GMT, according to Downdetector.

At around 1:45am, Meta took to Twitter and wrote: "We know some of you might be experiencing issues with our apps today. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your patience."

At 4:26am, it announced that the issue had been fixed. Meta did not, however, state any reason behind the outage.

"Fixed! The issue has been resolved and things should be working normally again across our apps. Thanks again for your patience," Meta tweeted.