Meta's social media platforms experienced a global outage on Super Tuesday, affecting Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Messenger, and WhatsApp for over an hour.

The outage extended to Meta's Admin Center, Facebook and Instagram Shops, and WhatsApp Business API, highlighting widespread service disruption.

Google's YouTube and some Gmail services also faced issues, with both Meta and Google's parent company Alphabet confirming the problems on their platforms.

Although some hacker groups claimed responsibility, past incidents suggest that such disruptions are typically due to internal technical failures.

The timing of the outage impacted U.S. political campaigns during Super Tuesday primaries, which rely heavily on social media for voter engagement.

The incident is reminiscent of a major outage in 2021, signaling an ongoing challenge for Meta in ensuring platform stability.

Despite the service interruptions, Meta reported an increase in monthly active users in 2023, underlining the platforms' growth and the critical need for resilient digital infrastructures.