An outage affected Facebook and Instagram users in the U.S. for roughly an hour on Sept. 20, beginning around 8:55 p.m. ET; service returned by 10 p.m., Reuters reported. Downdetector logged over 17,000 Facebook and more than 5,000 Instagram reports at the peak.
Downdetector’s figures were user-submitted reports, not confirmed counts of affected accounts. The September outage followed a smaller July disruption, when the site logged about 4,800 Facebook and 2,800 Instagram reports. Meta had not publicly explained the latest incident; Reuters reported no evidence of data loss or a security breach.
Insider Monkey’s analysis says a one-hour interruption is likely to have little effect on advertising revenue by itself, given Meta’s 3.6 billion daily active people and second-quarter revenue of $60.8 billion, up 28%. It warns that more frequent or longer disruptions could affect ad delivery. Meta’s free cash flow fell 91% to $784 million in Q2, while management expected $130 billion–$145 billion in capital spending for 2026.
