Thousands locked out of WhatsApp as Meta crashes in global outage – also stalling Instagram and Facebook

THOUSANDS of people were locked out of WhatsApp after Meta crashed in a global outage - with Instagram and Facebook also affected.

As noted by Downdetector, there was a sharp increase in reported outages from users of these various services on Wednesday night.

The UK and parts of Europe, the US, Asia, Australia and South America all experienced glitches - many of which are now resolved.

WhatsApp, owned by Meta, saw numerous reported disruptions starting at around 6pm last night.

The Downdetector website is reporting that there were more than 18,000 outage reports for WhatsApp since yesterday 6pm.

Furious users took to the comments online to blast the outage.

One wrote: "Ugh! I may have to resort to real living in a minute!"

Another commented: "Even simple messages are not being delivered."

"Voice note not working. What nonsense app," said a third.

Users also complained about having issues with Instagram with 62,000 being registered by Downdetector in the same time frame.

Instagram and WhatsApp are now back online after a mass global outage.

But Facebook has yet to confirm whether all its issues have been resolved.

Facebook users are also complaining of outages, with issues and reports over much of the Eastern and Pacific coasts in the US. 

According to Downdetector, Facebook outages were first reported at about 6pm yesterday and have reached more than 100,000 complaints of an issue.

Meta, which owns the apps, previously said on X: "We're aware that a technical issue is impacting some users' ability to access our apps.

"We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and apologize for any inconvenience."

Many users in the US were among those who made the first complaints, although the issue appears to have affected others around the globe.

Users who try to load these services are encountering a variety of issues, both on the web and in their respective apps.

Problems being encountered include not being able to use the service’s app or website at all.

Users encountered not being able to post content on the service or seeing errors like all Facebook posts showing zero comments.

Others have managed to load the service but are finding it extremely slow and laggy.

There have been numerous instances of Meta and other social media apps having issues and reporting outages.

Earlier this year Facebook users suffered an outage after they were met with log in errors.

Mark Zuckerberg previously apologised after Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram went down for nearly six hours in October 2021.

During the outage, potentially billions of people were left without access to the social media tools they heavily relied on for communication with friends and family.

The repercussions also extended to Mark Zuckerberg at the time, with an estimated $6 billion (£4.4 billion) loss in his personal fortune as Facebook shares experienced a sharp decline.

Zuckerberg wrote in a post at the time: "Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger are coming back online now.

";Sorry for the disruption today -- I know how much you rely on our services to stay connected with the people you care about."