In 2024, the digital world experienced some of the most significant disruptions of the last decade. Downdetector, the leading platform for monitoring service interruptions, recorded several incidents that affected millions of users globally. Among them, on March 5, 2024, Facebook suffered the largest outage of the year, affecting more than 11.1 million users worldwide.
This incident not only left millions without access to the popular social network, but also affected Instagram, which experienced its second largest outage of the year in the Asia-Pacific region with more than 908,000 problem reports.
Another significant incident occurred on July 19, when a routine CrowdStrike software update went awry, affecting services that depend on this platform, including emergency services, airlines and transportation applications. This bug generated almost 5 million problem reports.
In the United States, AT&T experienced a massive outage on February 22 due to an equipment configuration error, leaving customers without network access for more than 12 hours. This incident was the largest recorded by Downdetector for a telecommunications operator since 2020.
Service interruptions in Europe
In the Asia-Pacific region, in addition to the Facebook outage, Microsoft 365 suffered a significant outage on June 26, with more than 168,000 users reporting issues. Japan was particularly hard hit, with more than 139,000 reports coming from that country. Additionally, Japanese payments system PayPay and Indian service provider Jio also faced major outages in May and September, respectively.
Social networks experienced the largest service interruptions in Europe according to data from Downdetector
In Europe, social networks were the main sources of disconnection. The Facebook outage on March 5 generated more than 3.4 million reports in this region, making it the largest outage of the year in Europe. WhatsApp also suffered a significant outage in April, with more than 1.1 million users reporting problems. Additionally, two German companies, 1&1 and Deutsche Telekom, experienced almost simultaneous outages in late May, affecting hundreds of thousands of users.
Digital infrastructure vulnerability
Digital service disruptions in 2024 underscore the vulnerability of our highly interconnected digital infrastructure. These incidents not only cause momentary inconvenience, but can also have significant repercussions on business productivity, revenue, and reputation. The ability of platforms like Downdetector to quickly detect and report these outages is crucial to mitigate their impact and restore services as quickly as possible.
In a world where constant connectivity is essential, it is vital that businesses and service providers invest in robust infrastructure and backup solutions to minimize the risk of outages and ensure service continuity.
