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Meta’s Facebook, Instagram recover after brief outage in US

By Thomson Reuters Sep 20, 2026 | 8:46 PM

Sept 20 (Reuters) – Meta’s social media platforms Facebook and Instagram recovered after a brief ​outage disrupted service for ‌thousands of users in the U.S. on Sunday, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.

The disruption began around 8:55 ‌p.m. ​ET and peaked ⁠at more than ⁠17,000 reports of outages on Facebook and over than 5,000 reports on Instagram, according to Downdetector, ​which tracks outages by collating status reports from multiple ⁠sources.

Reports of outages ⁠had fallen sharply by ​about 10 p.m. ET, indicating the ​services had largely recovered.

Meta did not ‌immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the outage.

Since the numbers on ⁠Downdetector are based on user-submitted reports, the actual number of affected users may ⁠vary.

Facebook ‌and Instagram experienced a ⁠similar outage in July, ​when ‌Downdetector logged as many ​as 4,808 ⁠reports of issues on Facebook and 2,829 on Instagram.

(Reporting by Rishabh Jaiswal in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips; Editing by ​Nivedita Bhattacharjee)