Thousands of users in the UAE and other parts of the world experienced temporary disruptions on Meta-owned platforms on Sunday, with many reporting problems accessing Facebook and Instagram.
The outage appeared to begin around midday, as reports of technical issues surged on online service tracking platform Downdetector. Many Facebook users said they were unexpectedly logged out of their accounts or were unable to access the platform through web browsers.
According to Downdetector, the majority of Facebook complaints related to website access, while others reported login failures and server connection errors. Some users attempting to open Facebook through a browser were met with error messages preventing access to the platform.
Instagram users also reported difficulties during the disruption. Around 40 per cent of complaints involved problems navigating the app, while approximately 30 per cent of users said they were unable to view content in their feeds. Another 20 per cent reported server connection issues affecting normal use of the platform.
The service interruption was not limited to the UAE. Downdetector recorded more than 4,700 reports of Facebook issues worldwide and over 3,000 reports related to Instagram during the outage, suggesting the disruption affected users across multiple countries.
The number of reports on Downdetector reflects complaints submitted directly by users and may not represent the total number of people affected.
Several users took to alternative social media platforms to report that they had been logged out of Facebook without warning or were unable to sign back into their accounts. Others said Instagram pages failed to load or refreshed repeatedly without displaying new content.
Meta had not immediately issued a public statement explaining the cause of the disruption or providing a timeline for the restoration of services.
The incident follows a similar outage experienced by users in the UAE last month, when many people reported being automatically logged out of their Meta accounts and encountering difficulties logging back in. That disruption also affected Facebook and other Meta services for several hours before normal access was restored.
Although Sunday’s outage appeared to be temporary, it once again highlighted the widespread reliance on Meta’s platforms for communication, business activity and social networking. Service interruptions can affect millions of users, including businesses that depend on Facebook and Instagram to reach customers and process enquiries.
By early afternoon, some users reported that access had begun returning, although others continued to experience intermittent problems with logging in and loading content. Meta is expected to provide further information once it completes its assessment of the incident.
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