Facebook and Instagram Users Report Access Problems Early Sunday

Users reported being unable to access Facebook early Sunday morning after the site displayed messages that accounts were temporarily unavailable due to a technical issue. The issues began around 3:25 a.m. ET, with thousands of reports originating in the United States.

Similar problems appeared in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, India and elsewhere in Europe. Some users noted that Facebook functioned on mobile devices but not on desktop browsers. Downdetector data showed 63 percent of reports tied to the website, 20 percent to mobile devices and 10 percent to the app.

Instagram, also owned by Meta, saw rising reports at the same time. Downdetector indicated 44 percent of those issues involved the feed or timeline, 40 percent the app and 12 percent posting or publishing content. Users described difficulties loading feeds, sending messages and viewing stories, along with error messages and server connection problems.

Downdetector recorded lower-volume reports for WhatsApp, with 44 percent related to messaging, 39 percent to the app and 8 percent to login problems. A message on Facebook stated: "Your account is currently unavailable due to a site issue. We expect this to be resolved shortly.

Some Reddit users first received an error reading "You've been temporarily banned" before redirection to a generic page. Others saw a message citing temporary blocks for "going too fast and overusing" while refreshing the page. Meta experienced a nearly six-hour global outage in October 2021 that affected Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, which the company attributed at the time to a faulty configuration change to its network infrastructure.