On Tuesday, March 5th, 2024, social media users experienced a blackout as a massive outage crippled Meta’s platforms worldwide. As a result, hugely popular apps like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp ceased functioning, leaving billions disconnected for hours until services resumed. Moreover, this widespread disruption dealt a severe financial blow to Meta, according to experts.
Around 10 a.m. ET, reports of issues began flooding in, and Meta’s stock price reportedly dipped by 1.5%. However, it has since declined further by 1.6%. As Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp remained inaccessible, CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s losses piled up during the outage.
That Tuesday, many Facebook users found themselves abruptly logged out, sparking confusion and frustration. In addition, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp experienced glitches like failing feeds and message delivery issues. Addressing these problems on X, Meta’s Andy Stone reassured users that resolutions were underway. Furthermore, the Meta stated: “resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone impacted, and we apologize for the inconvenience.”
We're aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) March 5, 2024
via X (@andymstone)
Analysts have now quantified the staggering monetary losses Zuckerberg incurred from this massive downtime. Specifically, Wedbush Securities’ managing director Dan Ives informed DailyMail.com that Zuckerberg lost approximately $100 million in revenue that Tuesday morning as the Meta platforms crashed globally.
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All Meta-owned social apps experienced technical issues akin to a 2021 incident, resulting in a 7-hour outage. However, this time the problem was fixed within 2 hours. According to an internal Facebook source, their systems were down during the outage, with Meta’s dashboard showing “major disruptions” across multiple services. Coincidentally, this occurred shortly before a European Union deadline for Big Tech to comply with new Digital Markets Act regulations. Consequently, speculation arose that while Meta implemented compliance changes, coding errors may have triggered the outage.
