Meta explains what caused the massive Facebook and Instagram outage

Meta has issued a statement clarifying exactly what caused the enormous blackout across Facebook and Instagram.

Earlier today (March 5), users of Facebook and Instagram reported that they had been logged out of the service en masse.

Users then found that they had been unable to log back into their accounts, with some being given reports that their password was not valid.

People flocked to Twitter (X) to ask if others were also experiencing the same problems as before.

One person wrote: "When you realise both Facebook and Instagram are down and everybody rushing towards X."

A third posted: "So like everyone’s in X to verify if they the only one who got logged out in Facebook Messenger and Insta (Same)."

The outage appears to have affected users all over the world, with services on Meta platforms Facebook, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger all being impacted by the outage.

And a Meta employee has since addressed the issue.

Down Detector

A statement issued by Communications Director at Meta, Andy Stone, to X, reads: "Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services.

"We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience."

However, the explanation didn't quite get out in time to beat X owner Elon Musk making a joke about the situation.

Mateusz Slodkowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Musk took to the platform to troll Meta after the platforms went down, tweeting: "If you’re reading this post, it’s because our servers are working."

He was joined by the official account for X as well, which tweeted: "We know why you’re all here rn."

Many users were worried that their personal account had been hacked.

One wrote: "Not me changing my passwords on FB three times in five minutes thinking I got hacked only to find out that Facebook/IG are down for everyone."

Messaging service WhatsApp, also owned by Meta, did not appear to experience any disruption to its services during the outage.

Mateusz Slodkowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

The disruption began at around 3.00pm GMT, with services back up and running after around an hour and a half of not being accessible.

Website Down Detector showed that Facebook had more than half a million reports of service disruption.

Many users on X took to the platform to share jokes of how many people were arriving to check if they were the only one who'd been cut off.

One person estimated roughly how much money Facebook may have lost during the outage.

Taking Facebook's ad revenue for its websites last year, which was $84.2 billion, that comes down to around $160,000 a minute, or approximately $2,670 a second.