Thousands of Facebook users were blocked from getting into their accounts on the desktop website on Sunday afternoon, while the phone application kept working as usual. The disruption first showed up just after 3.30pm and, hours later, the site was still not restored.
By 4pm Sunday, Down Detector had logged more than 3,000 complaints, a sign that the problem was not limited to one corner of the network. Users appeared to be affected across the world, which helped turn a routine login failure into a broader outage search for Facebook.
That split between the desktop site and the phone application is what made the episode stand out. People who relied on Facebook through a browser were locked out, while those using the app on a phone were able to continue as normal. For anyone trying to work out whether Facebook was down, that mismatch mattered more than the number alone.
The outage also echoed earlier reports in pieces such as Is Facebook Down? Users report site issue on desktop version this morning and Is Instagram Down? Facebook users report desktop outage this morning, but this time the pattern was clearer: a global problem, concentrated on the desktop website, with no immediate fix in sight. Hours after the first complaints, there was still no sign that access had been restored.
What remains unanswered is the most practical question of all for users shut out of the site: why the desktop version failed while the phone application continued to work, and when that gap will close. Until the site comes back, the outage is being measured not by explanation but by how long Facebook users are left waiting.
