Facebook suffered a major global outage on Friday, with users unable to access the platform and the Facebook Messenger service disrupted, NewsFirst reported.
Users across multiple regions reported being automatically logged out of their accounts and unable to log back in, with error messages stating “an unexpected error occurred”. The main Facebook website also appeared affected, with some users repeatedly prompted to re-enter credentials despite entering the correct details. The disruption hit both the mobile application and the web platform, according to user reports.
Newswire reported similar issues on Friday afternoon, citing Downdetector and downforeveryoneorjustme as recording a sharp spike in error reports. Users in the Philippines, Canada, the United States, Australia, India and the United Kingdom flagged problems accessing their accounts, and additional issues were reported on Instagram and the WhatsApp desktop client — both also owned by Meta, the parent company of Facebook.
Meta had not issued an official statement on the cause or timeline for resolution by Friday evening Sri Lanka time. It also remained unclear whether the disruption was a fully global incident or limited to specific regions, NewsFirst said.
Facebook remains by far the most-used social platform in Sri Lanka, and brief Meta outages routinely interrupt small-business messaging and political communication during election cycles. The Human Rights Commission previously warned the police not to use Facebook account suspensions as a sanction, underscoring how dependent local public discourse has become on the platform.
