Too big to fail? The biggest outages in 2024 according to Downdetector

Our dependence on technology is so great that for many it seems like the world will end when a popular website or service becomes inaccessible on the Internet, and 2024 has seen many outages that reminded us how much such disruption can disrupt the daily lives of millions of people. We analyzed Downdetector® data from the first to third quarters of 2024 to find out where the pain of the disconnect was felt most. Read on for an overview of the biggest outages of 2024 on a global scale and by region.

Note that while some companies experienced more than one major outage during this period, we only included the largest incident per company in each chart.

The world’s biggest outages this year

Users of social media sites, internet providers and gaming sites and services suffered the most disruption, according to Downdetector data on the world’s largest outages this year. Facebook had the biggest outage on our list. As of March 5, over 11.1 million people around the world reported problems with the popular social media site.

The second largest global outage may be the most memorable. While CrowdStrike isn’t a service most people think of, we’ve seen nearly 5 million reports to services that rely on it (or rely on Microsoft relying on Crowdstrike), including emergency services, airlines and ride-sharing apps, as A routine software update was performed poorly on July 19th.

AT&T suffered the world’s third-largest outage when a device configuration error caused customers across the United States to lose network access for over 12 hours, according to Downdetector data.

Largest outages in each region

Asia Pacific region affected by global outages

The March 5 Facebook outage also topped the list of outages in Asia Pacific, triggering over 908,000 user reports to Downdetector and crashing Instagram as the second largest outage. The third largest outage occurred on June 26, when over 168,000 Microsoft 365 users in Asia Pacific reported service disruptions. Japan was particularly hard hit, with over 139,000 user reports from that country alone.

People in Asia Pacific were also affected by local outages, with over 76,000 users reporting issues with Japanese payment system PayPay in May and 65,000 users in India reporting issues with Jio during a service outage in September.

Europe has problems with social media sites

According to data from Downdetector, social media sites were the leading cause of disconnections in Europe. Over 3.4 million European users reported issues with Facebook during the outage on March 5, marking the largest outage in Europe in the first to third quarters of 2024. WhatsApp users suffered the second-largest outage in Europe, with over 1.1 million people reporting issues during an outage in early April.

Two German companies also appeared on our list of the biggest outages in Europe, with over 218,000 reports of problems at 1&1 and over 209,000 reports of problems with Deutsche Telekom when the two companies experienced service interruptions almost a week apart in late May.

Latin America is suffering from global social failures

The top three outages in Latin America matched those in Europe, with social media sites causing the greatest burden on users, according to data from Downdetector. The Facebook outage on March 5 was deeply felt, with nearly 850,000 users reporting Facebook-related issues on Downdetector in Latin America and over 260,000 Instagram-related issues. WhatsApp had the second-largest outage in the region, with nearly 420,000 user reports during the two hours the service was down on April 3.

Bait, a Mexican mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) owned by Walmart, suffered an outage on April 2, with nearly 99,000 users reporting issues to Downdetector. And on September 24, over 74,000 users reported problems with Brazilian fintech bank Nubank.

The Middle East and Africa are experiencing a mix of local and global outages

Outage patterns in the Middle East and Africa differed from those in other regions, with users reporting as many issues with local websites and services as with global ones. The two largest outages, Microsoft 365 on March 14 and Facebook on March 5, were part of global events.

The third largest outage in the region occurred at the South African telecommunications provider Telkom. Nearly 55,000 users across Africa reported problems with Downdetector when Telkom experienced an outage on May 13. MTN, Vodacom and du are other telcos that made our list of top outages in the Middle East and Africa in the first to third quarters of 2024.

United States and Canada

As we have seen in much of the world, Facebook topped the list of outages in the US, according to Downdetector. Over 5.8 million users reported issues with the service during the March 5 outage. The outages at Crowdstrike and AT&T also hit the US hard, with nearly 5 million and over 3.4 million user reports, respectively. Gaming websites and services and telecommunications providers in the US filled out the rest of the list

Downdetector is your source of information about service interruptions, monitoring real-time performance for thousands of popular web services worldwide. Find Downdetector online or in the free Speedtest app for Android or iOS. We recently introduced push notifications so you can be notified of outages as soon as they occur. Companies that want early notification of service issues may be interested in Downdetector Explorer^TM.

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About the author

Isla McKetta

Isla was the first female content manager at Ookla and worked her way up to Sr. Director of Consumer Marketing over more than eight years at the company.