Instagram, WhatsApp hit with massive outage, down for more than an hour

New Delhi: Once again, Instagram and WhatsApp were unavailable. For a large number of users around the world, both of Meta's social media sites were unavailable in the late hours of November 19. Between 10 and 11:30 p.m. IST, a significant number of complaints appeared on Downdetector. After a 1.5-hour interruption, the outage was resolved, and both services are fully operational.

The outage reportedly affected almost 4000 people around the world and affected all of Meta's services. Apart from Instagram, users on WhatsApp and Facebook were also affected, however, the problem was not as severe as it was on Instagram. The reasons for the outage have not been published by Meta or Instagram.

Several users resorted to Twitter to express their dissatisfaction with the situation. "Another day another Meta outage. Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are all DOWN. #GetItTogetherMark,” wrote one user. “Instagram keep getting down over and over again,” wrote another.

While this outage only impacted a few customers around the world for a short time, it paled in comparison to the notorious 7-hour outage that disrupted all of Meta's services a month ago. Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and all of Meta's services were down for 7 hours due to a technical fault on Meta's end.

Mark Zuckerberg announced the rebranding of Facebook to Meta shortly after the massive outage, and outlined his plans to unleash the metaverse of Facebook services among users. Other corporations rapidly picked up on the metaverse trend, with Microsoft showcasing a metaverse version of its business suite services.

And, as part of the effort to simplify things, Meta's Instagram just announced that the Threads app for Android and iOS will be discontinued. Threads was created in 2019 to compete with Snapchat by allowing users to send tales and interact with their Instagram friends without having to open the main app. The app makes it easier to post stories fast and disseminate them to friends. It did not, however, gain enough popularity among Instagram users.