Hundreds of thousands of people have been experiencing issues with Facebook today (Tuesday, March 5) with many sharing they had been locked out of the site.

It comes as many users of the app took to the outage site Downdetector to share they are having issues with Facebook owned by Meta.

The Facebook outage reportedly began at 3pm, with many other apps such as Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads also suffering with issues.

Why has Facebook locked me out?

It appears several apps owned by Meta were facing issues, with the communications director of the company acknowledging this.

Andy Stone, communications director at Meta, posted on X, formerly Twitter: "We're aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now."

In replies to his post, many users shared at first they thought they had been hacked or had been banned from Meta apps.

One person wrote: "For a minute I thought it was me getting banned or something."

Another posted: "OMG I was thinking something hacked my accounts."

Meanwhile, another wrote: "Meta uses X to let us know Facebook & Instagram is down. Haha!"

Recommended reading:

What is DownDetector?

DownDetector is an online website that allows users of popular services including Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Virgin Media and more to report if they are having trouble with the services.

The site only reports an incident when the number of problem reports is significantly higher than the typical volume for that time of day.

Are you having trouble with Facebook? Let us know in the comments.