On Tuesday, March 5, 2024, darkness fell on social media as a major disruption occurred on Meta’s platforms globally. Popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp ceased to function, reportedly taking hours to resume normal operations.

According to experts, not only did millions of users experience disruptions due to this widespread issue, but the company also faced significant financial repercussions. Around 10 AM GMT, reports of the issue started emerging, leading to a reported 1.5% drop in Meta’s share price. However, since then, it has experienced a further decline of 1.6%.

The downtime of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp added to Zuckerberg’s losses.

Many users experienced sudden logouts from Facebook on Tuesday, leading to confusion and frustration. Similar issues were reported on Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp, causing failures in feed updates and message sending. Meta’s Andy Stone addressed these concerns on Facebook and assured that solutions are in progress. A statement was released, stating, “We have worked to resolve the issue as quickly as possible for all affected users, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”

Experts have now revealed the extent of financial losses incurred by Meta due to this significant downtime. Facebook’s Director of Security, Dan Eve, told DailyMail.com that Mark Zuckerberg incurred a loss of approximately $100 million in revenue due to the global platform outage on Tuesday morning.

The reason behind Meta Global Outage.

All social media platforms owned by Meta experienced technical issues in 2021, leading to a disruption lasting for 7 hours. However, this time the issue was resolved within 2 hours. An internal source at Facebook informed Dailymail.com that their internal systems went down during the outage, and Meta’s service dashboard indicated a “major disruption” across several services.

This disruption occurred shortly before the Thursday deadline for major tech companies to comply with the European Union’s new Digital Markets Act. It is speculated that Meta was making changes for compliance, which could have led to coding errors causing the outage. Meta is exploring changes, such as allowing users to separate their Facebook and Instagram accounts, to prevent the amalgamation of personal data for targeted ads. It’s not clear if this disruption is related to Meta’s preparations for the DMA or not.