'Fixed!': Meta services restored after hours of outage

After a two hours-long outage affected its social media applications, Meta said the issue was "fixed" with all the apps up and running again in the wee hours of Saturday.

The outage impacted thousands of users around the world with nearly 20,000 complaining about having trouble accessing Facebook and Instagram and using Meta's messaging service WhatsApp.

In Pakistan, too, the platforms were not functioning properly around midnight till 3:00am.

An outage tracking website, Downdetector.com, recorded that the applications were down around the same hours with 49% users struggling to send messages on WhatsApp, 32% couldn't send voice notes, while the application wasn't working at all for 19%.

Meanwhile, 42% Instagram users had trouble using the app, 35% couldn't log in, while 23% couldn't load its website. At least 46% Facebook users were not able to log into the app, 34% couldn't access its website and 20% experienced server connection issues.

Outage reports, according to Reuters, had come down to less than 500 as of 22:30 GMT, according to Downdetector.

At around 1:45am, Meta took to Twitter and wrote: "We know some of you might be experiencing issues with our apps today. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your patience."

At 4:26am, it announced that the issue had been fixed.

"Fixed! The issue has been resolved and things should be working normally again across our apps. Thanks again for your patience," Meta tweeted.

Meta did not, however, state any reason behind the outage.

Downdetector tracks outages by collating status reports from several sources including user-submitted errors on its platform. The outage may be affecting a larger number of users.

Issues with Meta's Ads Manager, the advertising tool that lets brands buy and create Facebook ads, were also resolved, the company said.

— Additional input by Reuters