Dubai: Social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, owned by Meta, experienced a widespread technical outage on Sunday, affecting users in the UAE and several other countries. Thousands of users reported being unable to access their accounts, while others encountered login failures, loading errors and server connection issues.
According to outage monitoring platform Downdetector, reports of service disruptions surged around midday, with many users saying they were unable to log into Facebook through web browsers or access key features on Instagram. Some Facebook users also received messages indicating that their accounts were temporarily unavailable due to a site issue.
The disruption was not limited to the UAE. Thousands of outage reports were submitted from users across multiple countries within a short period, indicating a broader global service interruption affecting Meta’s social media platforms. As Downdetector relies on user-submitted reports, the actual number of affected users is likely to be significantly higher.
At the time of reporting, Meta had not announced the cause of the outage or provided an estimated timeline for full service restoration. Users were advised to wait while the company investigated the issue.
