On December 12, Meta had a rough start to the day as three of its biggest platforms — WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook — faced a global outage. Millions of users worldwide, including in India and the United States, struggled to access their accounts or use the services.
The disruption began in India around midnight, with users reporting issues primarily related to WhatsApp. Many found themselves unable to send or receive messages and tried rebooting their Wi-Fi routers in an attempt to fix the problem. Instagram and Facebook users also reported difficulties during this time, but the services seemed to recover within an hour for most Indian users.
However, the story was different in the United States. The outages for Instagram and WhatsApp extended into the early hours of the morning, leaving users frustrated. According to Downdetector, a popular platform for tracking service outages, the number of reports was higher in the US, suggesting a longer-lasting issue compared to other regions.
Downdetector also confirmed that the majority of WhatsApp issues were related to sending messages, with Instagram and Facebook users facing similar disruptions in connectivity. Meta-owned platforms updated their users about the situation through posts on X (formerly Twitter), keeping everyone informed.
While Meta has not yet released a detailed explanation, it is likely that a common technical issue caused the downtime across all three platforms. We can expect more clarity from the company in the coming days as they investigate and address the problem.
