Facebook and Instagram briefly stopped working on Tuesday, temporarily removing NWT residents’ ability to complain about nearby people, share photos from warmer locations or sell things they only just bought.
Threads was also affected. Both users were said to be devastated.
The outage stretched beyond Canada, with reports of people in Europe and elsewhere struggling to log in or access Meta’s apps and services. WhatsApp, which is also run by Meta, continued operating normally.
By 9:40am, users in the NWT reported being able to access Facebook again and Instagram had returned for many people.
The NWT is reliant on Facebook, in particular, for a wide range of functions. Governments of all levels almost exclusively used Facebook to communicate with residents during last year’s wildfires and evacuations, and the results of many local elections in the territory appear solely on Facebook.
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