Are Facebook & Instagram down? Users report outages on April 8

Meg Bethany Koepp

[Update: April 8, 5:54 p.m. ET — Both Instagram and Facebook appear to be working again for the majority of users.]


Social media giants Facebook and Instagram appear to be down worldwide, with many reporting issues with loading the popular apps on April 8.

Current events mean many are at home and surfing the web, making this the worst time for Facebook and Instagram to suffer from outages and issues – specifically with loading and FB’s Messenger service.

According to DownDetector, the problems started at around 5:12 PM EST on April 8, with users still experiencing complications with the websites.

downdetector instagram facebook april 8 outages
Within 30 minutes, many North American cities were reporting outages.

Because the websites aren’t working, people were forced onto Twitter to complain about the problem. Many replied to DownDetector’s official account to report various outages.

With some people relieved to find out they hadn’t gotten banned, others replied to DownDetector’s tweet about Instagram’s outage by noting that “Facebook is down right now!” It appears that both sites crashed at similar times and their audiences are perplexed.

“I legit thought the person whose page I was on had blocked me…” On the plus side, people seem to be glad to find out that they’re not the only ones suffering from an outage — so DownDetector is possibly saving relationships.

The account also reported problems with the FB’s Messenger service, which started around a similar time as Instagram. Many use it to keep in contact with friends and family, send photos and videos, and to make video calls.

Since Instagram is owned by the company, it’s hardly surprising that its site is down too, with many across the world also complaining it won’t work for them either.

The social media giant has yet to update its users about when they can expect the sites to return to normal, neither have they reported on what exactly is causing the outages.


Dexerto will update this article with any new information on the outages as soon as more develops.

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About The Author

Meg was Weekend Editor at Dexerto before leaving us in April 2022.