After a global outage, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Whatsapp are said to have been restored

According to Downdetector.com, Meta Platforms' social networking platforms Instagram and Facebook, messaging service WhatsApp, and Twitter competitor Threads were all restored following a brief outage impacting thousands of users on Monday.

Over 14,000 people reported difficulties accessing Instagram during the peak of the outage, which lasted over an hour, while approximately 7,000 and 2,700 users reported difficulties accessing Facebook and WhatsApp, respectively.

Threads, Meta's newest service, also had an outage, with around 470 users reporting difficulties using the app.

Downdetector monitors outages by compiling status updates from many sources, including user-submitted faults on its site. A bigger number of customers might have been affected by the outage.

Meta did not react quickly to a Reuters inquiry about the disruptions.

Meanwhile, an executive from Meta told an Australian investigation into foreign involvement on Tuesday that the company aims to flag government-affiliated accounts on its new Twitter-like platform Threads.

"Areas such as labels for state-affiliated media and fact-checking are all areas where we see a lot of value, and it's our aspiration to build that out expeditiously," Meta's manager of public policy for Australia, Josh Machin, told the Senate committee.

The announcement comes less than a week after Meta debuted Threads, which is largely seen as being akin to the microblogging site Twitter.

Since entrepreneur Elon Musk turned Twitter private in 2022, it has eliminated tags from government-affiliated accounts, prompting criticism about lowering consumers' media literacy.

When asked if Russian state-affiliated broadcaster RT or Chinese state-affiliated publication Xinhua News Agency will be appropriately marked on Threads, Machin replied, "that's our aspiration."

"If any state-affiliated media violates our policies, we will remove them," he told the panel. "Broader functionality around tags... are all top priorities for us as we continue to bring out the product."

Meta's Facebook and Instagram profiles already contain tags indicating that they are state-controlled media from Russia and China, respectively.