It’s unclear what’s sparked the mass outage this morning (Picture: SOPA)

Facebook and Instagram are experiencing worldwide outages.

The disruption began at around 8.30am,with 5,200 Facebook users in the UK unable to access their accounts or share posts just half an hour later.

By 10am,meanwhile,at least 3,500 people were struggling to log in to Instagram,according to the outage monitor,Downdetector.

Users loading the desktop versions of the platforms were told their accounts are ‘temporarily unavailable.

‘Your account is currently unavailable due to a site issue,’ the message said.

‘We expect this to be resolved shortly. Please try again in a few minutes.’

Accessing the desktop version of Facebook or Instagram led to an error message (Picture: Meta)

Around one in two Facebook complaints were about being unable to access the social media platform on a web browser.

Some users able to access the Instagram phone app were treated as if they had only just made an account,telling them: ‘Welcome to Instagram.’

Others said that they were unable to send messages or their posts would not upload.

Users in the US,Indonesia,Myanmar and Australia,among others,also experienced issues.

Complaints largely died off by about 11.30am. Meta has yet to provide a reason for the disruption.

Meta Status,which reports outages and downtimes,is reporting no issues.

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