Well, it looks like Meta has finally figured out just how much growth it can handle before Threads brings the whole ship down.
This evening, users have reported issues with Instagram, Threads, Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp on Downdetector. Users are noticing loading issues with their feeds, content on their profiles, and the ability to post to the platforms.
According to Downdetector, reports of issues started to come in around 5:30 PM EST. The hashtag #ThreadsDown, #InstagramDown, #FacebookDown, and #WhatsAppDown also started trending immediately on Twitter.
Meta has yet to acknowledge any of the issues on its Twitter accounts, and it’s unclear exactly what has caused all of the services to go down. However, with the insane growth that Threads has experienced over the last week since launch — crossing 100 million users in five days — it wouldn’t be hard to guess that the strain on Meta’s servers has finally hit a tipping point.
This isn’t actually too far from the last outage that Meta experienced. Back in mid-June, Instagram also had an outage that the company was able to resolve the same day. Hopefully, the company is able to bring all of the affected services back online quickly.
It is also funny to see Threads go down after many made fun of Twitter for the rate limit issues the competing service experienced over the 4th of July weekend. It just goes to show that, no matter how big you are, you’re going to experience outages and get roasted for it online.
It’s currently unclear when the outage will be resolved, but we’ll be sure to keep things updated here as we learn more!
UPDATE on July 10, 2023 at 6:40 PM EST: While Meta has not officially acknowledged the issue yet, the outage affecting its services appears to be resolved. While reports of issues with Instagram hit a peak of over 15,000 a minute on Downdetector around 5:52 PM EST, that number dropped to less than 50 by 6:22 PM EST. We’ll be sure to post any official announcements from the company if they make them, but for now, things seem to be coming back!
