'Technical issue' impacting Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, Meta says

A "technical issue" is impacting users of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, Meta has said.

In a statement on the X social media platform, the tech firm wrote: "We're aware that a technical issue is impacting some users' ability to access our apps.

"We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and apologise for any inconvenience."

According to Downdetector, which allows people to report problems with popular apps and websites, shows a big spike in reports of issues with Meta services shortly around 6pm.

At 6.07pm there were 25,807 reports about Facebook in the UK and 106,401 in the US.

Meanwhile, the number of reports in the UK about WhatsApp totalled 15,565 at 6.28pm.

A separate message posted on X, from the WhatsApp account, said: "We're actively working on a solution and starting to see a return to normal for most people.

"We expect things to be back to normal shortly."

Earlier this year, a technical issue led to an outage which impacted hundreds of thousands of Facebook and Instagram users globally.

The platforms faced another outage in October, although services were largely restored within an hour.

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(c) Sky News 2024: 'Technical issue' impacting Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, Meta says