Facebook and Instagram accounts crash

UPDATED: Facebook and Instagram accounts crashed for thousands of users this afternoon.

The social media apps were both down and not working with many tens of thousands hit globally by the crash which is believed to have started in America. The gremlins started at around 3:00 pm today (Tuesday) with the outage still ongoing until around 4.30 pm.

Downdetector, which monitors outages across the globe, was showing over 266,000 reports of Facebook being down at the peak of the outrage. Instagram stands at over 16,000 reports making this one of the biggest issues for Meta (which owns both of these platforms) in years. Whats app which is also owned by meta was unaffected.
It’s unclear what caused the problems but many Facebook and Instagram users dashed to rival social site, X (formerly Twitter) to vent their anger.

Has Facebook encountered a problem or has someone or some agency compromised my Facebook account?
My account logged out from all devices and doesnt allow me to log into it saying my password is incorrect. Also it doesnt respond to change password

— RajBhaduriAviator (@RajBhads90) March 5, 2024

Is anyone else that has Facebook having problems with logging in right now or other problems?

— Vikingsfan2220 (@vikingsfan2220) March 5, 2024

Has Facebook been hacked? It has closed out and tells you to long back in. When you try, states password is wrong.

— brendaescalon (@brendaescalon) March 5, 2024