Tech Giants in Trouble: Unravelling Social Media Outages in 2024 

As technology continues to advance, even the largest social media platforms face challenges in maintaining seamless services. In 2024, some of the world’s biggest tech companies, including Meta (Facebook, Instagram), X, TikTok, and others have encountered significant social media outages. These glitches have impacted millions of users, raising concerns about the reliability of these platforms and their ability to manage large-scale digital infrastructures. 

In this article, we explore five major reported cases of social media outages that have plagued platforms in 2024, examining their causes, effects on users, and potential solutions toward widespread stability.

X (formerly Twitter) – widespread outages and broken features 

In early 2024, X faced a series of technical issues that left users unable to access key features of the platform. On multiple occasions in January and February, users reported widespread outages where they couldn’t refresh their feeds, post tweets, or view notifications. Additionally, the platform’s DMs (direct messages) were affected, with many users finding that their messages were delayed or lost entirely. 

One of the most significant outages occurred on January 12, 2024, when X went down globally for nearly three hours. Users across Europe, North America, and Asia were affected. According to X, the outage was caused by issues with the platform’s backend systems, which were undergoing major updates. The platform had been making changes to improve user experience and integrate more advanced features like longer posts, but these updates seem to have caused unforeseen technical difficulties. 

The repeated disruptions have caused frustration among users and raised concerns about the stability of X under Elon Musk’s leadership. The platform has yet to fully stabilise its services, leaving some users questioning whether X’s shift towards more aggressive content policies and technical changes has come at the expense of its infrastructure reliability. 

Instagram – archive story glitch and inaccessible features 

In February 2024, Instagram users experienced a major issue with the platform’s Story archive feature, where previously archived stories were not accessible for many users. Instagram’s Story feature allows users to share ephemeral content, which disappears after 24 hours but can be saved in the archives. However, many users reported that older archived stories were no longer visible, sparking frustration for those who relied on the feature for preserving memories and curating their profiles. 

On February 15, 2024, reports of missing archived stories began circulating widely on platforms like Reddit and Twitter. Users complained that both personal and business accounts had lost access to significant portions of their archived content. For many influencers and businesses, archived stories play a key role in their brand’s online presence, and losing this content was a significant blow. 

Instagram acknowledged the issue a few days later, attributing it to a “server-side bug” related to recent updates on the platform. The issue was resolved by February 20, but the damage to user trust remained, especially for those who had lost access to crucial business content during the outage. 

Meta (Facebook and WhatsApp) – global social media outages 

Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, experienced a significant global outage on March 3, 2024. For several hours, users across the globe were unable to send messages on WhatsApp, log in to Facebook, or load posts on Instagram. The outage affected Meta’s entire ecosystem, which relies on shared infrastructure across its platforms. 

According to Meta, the problem stemmed from an error during routine maintenance at one of its data centres. A misconfiguration caused a cascading failure that impacted the routing of network traffic, effectively cutting off access to millions of users. While Meta was able to restore services after approximately four hours, the outage had widespread effects, particularly for businesses that rely on Facebook and WhatsApp for communication and e-commerce. 

This outage, while not as long as previous disruptions in Meta’s history, still drew criticism from users and businesses alike. With the rise of WhatsApp as a key communication tool in many countries, prolonged outages on these platforms are more than an inconvenience—they can disrupt entire economies. 

TikTok – video upload issues and playback errors 

In March 2024, TikTok users experienced a major glitch that disrupted video uploads and playback on the platform. On March 8, 2024, users reported being unable to upload videos, with the upload process stalling indefinitely. Those who managed to upload videos found that playback was choppy or that their content wasn’t being displayed properly to their followers. 

The issue was particularly troublesome for content creators who rely on TikTok for their livelihoods, as the glitch coincided with a major promotional event on the platform. Many creators who had planned to release sponsored content during that period lost out on crucial engagement and revenue due to the technical problems. 

TikTok confirmed that the glitch was related to a server issue caused by the platform’s growing user base and expanding content features. As TikTok continues to add new functionalities, such as e-commerce and live shopping, its infrastructure is being pushed to new limits. The platform apologised and resolved the issue within 24 hours, but the disruption highlighted the challenges of scaling a rapidly growing platform while maintaining stable service. 

YouTube – livestream interruptions and buffering errors 

In April 2024, YouTube users reported widespread issues with livestreams. On April 5, 2024, many users across different regions experienced interruptions during live broadcasts. Streams would suddenly buffer, freeze, or cut out entirely, leaving viewers frustrated, especially during major events like gaming livestreams or virtual concerts. 

The glitch was traced back to YouTube’s content delivery network (CDN), which experienced an overload in some regions due to unexpected traffic spikes. This issue was particularly problematic for content creators who rely on live streaming for fan engagement and monetisation through super chats and ads. 

YouTube quickly addressed the issue, acknowledging the problem and restoring services within a few hours. However, for many creators, the damage had already been done, as they lost live viewers and potential revenue during the outage. The incident also sparked conversations about the need for YouTube to improve its infrastructure to handle the growing demand for high-quality, uninterrupted live streams. 

Distilled 

While most of these outages were resolved quickly, the frequency and scale of the disruptions in 2024 have raised concerns about the future stability of these platforms. As tech giants continue to innovate, they must prioritise building resilient systems that can handle the demands of a growing user base and ever-increasing digital activity. Balancing innovation with reliability will be key to maintaining user trust and ensuring smooth, uninterrupted services in the future.