What you need to know
- Several of Meta's apps experienced an outage on Wednesday.
- Users on Twitter expressed that they were unable to send messages on Instagram or Messenger.
- This would be the third outage from Meta in just one month.
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is currently experiencing an outage affecting several of its apps. A cursory glance on Down Detector showed that Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger experienced outages on Wednesday. However, reports have flattened out, indicating that service should be back to normal. WhatsApp appeared to be unaffected by the outage.
It seems that the outage affected users' ability to send messages, with DMs not going through Fortunately, the outage didn't seem to affect many other functions in the app, although sending messages is the primary function of Messenger, rendering it largely useless for a moment.
This would be the third time in just one month that the apps are down, including a massive outage in early October that knocked Meta's services out for nearly six hours.
The outage was addressed by the Instagram and Messenger accounts, the former of which indicated that services should be back up and running.
And we're back! The issue's been fixed, so if you were having trouble with DMs earlier you should be all good now. Thanks for bearing with us! https://t.co/Dnj87R18e4And we're back! The issue's been fixed, so if you were having trouble with DMs earlier you should be all good now. Thanks for bearing with us! https://t.co/Dnj87R18e4— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) November 3, 2021November 3, 2021
After the first two outages in early October, Instagram announced that it was launching an "outage alert" feature that would inform users in their activity feed if there are any technical difficulties affecting the app. The feature is currently being tested over a few months, presumably to a small group of users on iOS and the best Android phones, but will be expanded to more people "if it makes sense to."
It would seem like it makes sense.
