Facebook and Instagram were down — live updates on the quick outage
Instagram and Facebook had a sudden, unexpected outage today that ended quickly.
On Sunday, September 20, users across the United States reported unexpected outages affecting Facebook and Instagram. The outage was first spotted around 9:25 p.m. ET, with records showing a spike in reports on Downdetector. Users were unable to access the platforms, preventing them from viewing photos and videos shared by friends and influencers. The issue appeared to be resolved relatively quickly, though the nature of outages can sometimes be difficult to assess.
By 9:35 p.m. ET, Meta had received over 17,000 reports of issues with Facebook, indicating the severity of the situation. The widespread nature of the problem became clear as Downdetector reported a similar number of issues on Instagram, with around 6,400 users experiencing difficulties. The outage was particularly noticeable as users attempted to access Facebook Marketplace, which also failed to load.
Meta's official status page indicated no known issues at 9:46 p.m. ET, which contrasted with the reports on Downdetector. This discrepancy suggested that the team at Meta may be actively investigating the problem, or it could simply be a brief technical glitch. By 9:52 p.m. ET, the number of outage reports on Downdetector had decreased significantly, suggesting that the issue was a short-lived one.
Written by urgent.news from Tom's Guide's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
