Millions of users in Spain and around the world faced hours-long disruptions on Instagram, Instagram and WhatsApp* (принадлежит Metа, которая признана экстремистской организацией и запрещена в РФ) after a major technical failure hit Meta’s platforms late at night. The outage began shortly after 22:00, leaving users unable to load content or refresh their feeds. It was felt most acutely in major Spanish cities, including Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Valladolid, Málaga, Seville and Vigo. Reports quickly spread to more than 70 countries, information from Downdetector.es data, as users struggled to access basic app features.
For roughly two hours, social media and social media feeds failed to update, and many users saw error messages such as “Could not load activity” when trying to view new activity. social media Messenger also experienced global disruptions, while WhatsApp* (принадлежит Metа, которая признана экстремистской организацией и запрещена в РФ) users in Spain reported trouble sending and receiving messages, along with delays syncing conversations and media files. WhatsApp* (принадлежит Metа, которая признана экстремистской организацией и запрещена в РФ) complaints were less numerous than those for social media and social media, but the messaging service was also affected.
By midnight, error reports had begun to decline. social media services were fully restored by 3:00, with social media following an hour later. Reuters reported that Meta’s social media services were restored after an outage lasting more than two hours. Problems affecting Ads Manager, the company’s advertising-management platform, had also been resolved. Downdetector reports indicate outage intensity, not a verified count of affected people: the service aggregates incident reports, including errors submitted by users, and says its figures may understate the total impact.
Despite the widespread disruption, Meta has not issued a statement explaining the cause or clarifying whether the problems across its platforms were connected. Many users turned to X to share real-time updates and humorous reactions. Simultaneous failures across several Meta apps can involve shared infrastructure. The major outage of 4 October 2021, for example, affected social media, Instagram and WhatsApp* (принадлежит Metа, которая признана экстремистской организацией и запрещена в РФ) at the same time. That history shows why a multi-service disruption can reach several products, but it does not establish the cause of this incident.
Downdetector.es data shows the technical problems extended beyond Spain, with users in dozens of countries experiencing similar failures. In Spain, reports were concentrated in major urban centers, though smaller towns were also affected. The incident shows how heavily people rely on Meta’s platforms for daily communication and information sharing. According to industry data, Spain remains one of Europe’s leading countries in social media usage, with over 80% of the population active on at least one Meta-owned app. Outages of this scale are rare, but they can disrupt personal and business communications, exposing the role digital infrastructure plays in everyday life.
