Meta Platforms Face International Outages Across Facebook and Instagram

Multiple social media platforms owned by Meta Platforms Incorporated suffered international outages on Sunday, July 19, 2026. The disruptions primarily affected Facebook and Instagram, with reports peaking between 9:20 and 9:45 Italian time. Users across North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East encountered unstable feeds, failures to upload content, and error messages stating accounts were temporarily unavailable.

DownDetector recorded a sharp increase in reports, including over 23,000 for Facebook and 18,000 for Instagram in the United States. While the outage impacted both desktop and app versions, as well as advertising systems, accounts of WhatsApp's status varied. One report indicated WhatsApp was disrupted, while another stated the service remained unaffected.

The outage lasted approximately two hours before services gradually returned to normal. NetBlocks confirmed the incident was a global technical glitch unrelated to cybersecurity attacks or country-level internet filtering. Meta did not provide an official statement explaining the cause of the outage.