NIGERIA: Facebook, Instagram Suffer Downtime, Users Automatically Logged Out

By Onoja Baba

Meta-owned social media platforms Facebook and Instagram experienced a major global outage on Friday afternoon, disrupting access for millions of users worldwide.

The outage, which began around 3:00 pm Nigerian time, affected Facebook’s main website, mobile application, and Messenger service. Many users reported being automatically logged out of their accounts, with repeated attempts to log back in resulting in error messages stating that “an unexpected error occurred.” Visitors to the Facebook website were greeted with a notice indicating that the company was working to resolve the technical issue.

Instagram users also faced significant disruptions, particularly when trying to access the platform via web browsers. While WhatsApp, another Meta service, remained largely operational for most users despite sharing some backend infrastructure, isolated reports of minor glitches surfaced.

Frustrated users quickly migrated to X (formerly Twitter), where reports of the outage flooded the platform as people sought confirmation that the problem was widespread and not limited to their devices. Downdetector, a website that monitors online service disruptions, recorded a massive spike in user complaints about Facebook and Instagram.

The outage appeared to be global, with similar issues reported across different countries within a short timeframe.

As of the time of this report, Meta had not issued an official statement explaining the cause of the disruption. The company does not maintain a public status page for its consumer-facing platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

This latest outage adds to a series of intermittent service interruptions experienced by Meta platforms in recent years, often sparking widespread anxiety among users who rely on the networks for communication, business, and information dissemination.