What caused the massive outage on Facebook and Instagram?

The massive outage on Facebook and Instagram occurred due to a technical issue, as confirmed by Meta, the parent company of both platforms. On March 5, 2024, users encountered difficulties logging into Facebook, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger, with some even being logged out unexpectedly. The outage was resolved within about two hours, and Meta stated that they worked promptly to restore services for those affected. More than half a million users reported issues with Facebook alone via DownDetector, indicating a significant impact globally.

The root cause of the technical issue was not specified in the search results, and the outage was not attributed to malicious cyber activity or related to major elections taking place on the same day.