FACEBOOK owner Meta has confirmed that the social network is suffering “major disruptions” due to a mysterious outage.
Thousands of users across the globe were randomly logged out of Facebook and unable to log back in.
Meta says it is investigating the problem
Is Facebook down?
A spike in reports was picked up by the Down Detector website just after 3pm UK time on March 5.
At around 3.30pm complaints had surged to more than 230,000 in the UK and over half a million in the US, suggesting the outage is quite substantial and possibly global.
The bug sees users logged out of their accounts and when they attempt to log back in an error alert pops up.
It reads: “Unable to log in. An unexpected error occurred. Please try logging in again.”
Meta hasn’t revealed what has caused the mass outage.
But the firm has acknowledged the problems, posting a “major disruptions” alert on its status website.
“We are aware of an issue impacting Facebook Login,” the company said.
“Our engineering teams are actively looking to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.”
How can I check if Facebook is not working?
Those who may be experiencing difficulties with Facebook can check another social media app such as Twitter for reports.
If you don’t have an X / Twitter account Down Detector will tell users when the apps are down or experiencing difficulties.
If it appears the problem may not be widespread, try checking the internet connection on your device or exiting the app before logging back in.
When have there been Facebook outages before?
There have been other reported Facebook outages in the past including:
June 2014: Facebook was down for about a half-hour – its longest outage in four years.
January 2015: Facebook was down for about 40 minutes affecting users worldwide.
March 2019: A massive Facebook outage affected users worldwide. Facebook was down for about 14 hours, which is believed to be the biggest interruption any social network has ever experienced.
January 2021: Facebook experienced a bug that logged most users out of their mobile app.
March 2021: Over 60,000 users said they experienced problems with Facebook, while 38,000 Instagram users also reported issues.
September 2021: Facebook users are locked out of their accounts.
October 2021: Facebook was one of a dozen apps that were experiencing outages
November 2021: Facebook malware affecting user logins and sharing.
April 2022: Facebook log in problems, reportedly due to maintenance.
April 2022: Issue for people trying to login using the gateway.
August 2022: Only posts from celebrity pages appeared.