Instagram, Facebook and Messenger went again on Friday night for some users for the second time in a week.
The Friday outage occurred just days after the social networking giant bundled a server update that led to a global outage for more than seven hours, leading to calls from politicians for the company's monopoly to be broken up.
Web monitoring group Downdetector showed there were more than 32,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Instagram on Friday from around 7pm GMT.
A smaller number of people, around 2,000 in both the UK and the US, reported they were unable to access Facebook, with the reports also coming in at around 7pm.
Some users reported that the social media platforms were back up and running by around 8pm GMT, with Facebook saying the issue was fixed at 10pm GMT.
Hundreds of millions of people were unable to access Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp for more than zeven hours on Monday, underscoring the world's reliance on platforms owned by the Silicon Valley giant.
Pictured: A map of the UK showing where people reported they had lost access to Facebook owned social media platforms including Facebook and Instagram
Pictured: A map of the US showing where the outages were reported on Downdetector
Facebook acknowledged the outage at around 8:20pm, writing on Twitter: 'We're aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and we apologize for any inconvenience.'
Instagram's communications Twitter account write: 'We know some of you may be having some issues using Instagram right now. We're so sorry and are working as quickly as possible to fix.'
On Twitter, the hashtag #Instagramisdown was becoming increasingly popular on Friday after it was used on Monday as people's go-to during the previous outage.
Facebook acknowledged the issue at around 8:20pm, writing on Twitter: 'We're aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products.
'We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and we apologize for any inconvenience.'
Instagram's communications Twitter account added: 'We know some of you may be having some issues using Instagram right now. We're so sorry and are working as quickly as possible to fix.'
Downdetector only tracks outages by collating status reports from a series of sources, including user-submitted errors on its platform. The outage might have affected a larger number of users.
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
Web monitoring group Downdetector showed there were more than 32,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Instagram on Friday at around 7pm GMT
On Downdetector, fewer users reported an outage on Facebook, with around 1,700 people saying they were having trouble accessing the platform
As was the case on Monday, people were quick to post memes on Twitter about the Facebook platforms going down on Friday night.
Many called for the company to fix their apps, while others posted variations on the themes of waiting for them to come back online for them.
Others on Twitter noted how their preferred app was still functioning, poking fun at those who tend to use Facebook or Instagram.
'Get it together Zuckerberg' one person wrote, along with a meme captioned 'Fix It'. Another wrote: 'Waiting for Instagram to get restored' along with pictures of Mr Bean standing in a field checking his watch.
The latest outage occurs four days after Facebook suffered an error during a routine maintenance on its network of data centres that caused a global collapse.
Facebook saw an estimated $100million in lost revenue, and the outage was caused when a faulty update that disconnected its servers from the internet, meaning engineers had to travel to its Santa Clara data center to fix the glitch in-person.
It blocked access to apps for billions of users of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, further intensifying weeks of scrutiny for the nearly $1 trillion company.
In a blog post apologising for the outage, Santosh Janardhan, Facebook's Vice President of Engineering and Infrastructure, said the collapse also impacted many of Facebook's internal tools and systems that it uses in its day-to-day operations, making it harder to solve the issue.
As was the case on Monday, people were quick to post memes on Twitter (pictured) about the Facebook platforms going down on Friday night
'Our engineering teams have learned that configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centres caused issues that interrupted this communication,' Janardhan wrote in the blog post.
'This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centres communicate, bringing our services to a halt.'
The outage on Monday was the largest Downdetector had ever seen and blocked access to apps for billions of users of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
It also came just hours after former employee whistleblower Frances Haugen went public with how the company puts profits above morals, and a day before her testimony in front of Congress.
Haugen testified on the US' Capitol Hill after she leaked reams of internal research to authorities and The Wall Street Journal, which has fueled one of Facebook's most serious crises yet.
'I believe that Facebook's products harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy,' Haugen told a Senate panel.
'Congressional action is needed. They won't solve this crisis without your help,' she added.
Frances Haugen on Tuesday appeared before Congress to discuss the workings of Facebook. She suggested a government entity be created to regulate Facebook during the scathing Senate hearing
Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday evening defended his company, saying it was 'frustrating' to see a 'false picture' of Facebook being painted by Haugen
In her testimony, she emphasized the power held by a service that is tightly woven into the daily lives of billions of users.
She also noted the risks that the social media giant's platforms are fueling a contagion of eating disorders, body-shaming and self-dissatisfaction that is particularly dangerous for young people.
'There are going to be women walking around this planet in 60 years with brittle bones because of the choices that Facebook made around emphasizing profit today,' she said, referring to the impact of eating disorders.
Facebook pushed back hard against the Journal stories underpinned by the voluminous internal studies that Haugen leaked, and the company fiercely objected to her testimony on Tuesday.
A Facebook statement called her 'a former product manager who worked at the company for less than two years, had no direct reports, never attended a decision-point meeting with C-level executives.'
'We don't agree with her characterization of the many issues she testified about,' said the statement from Lena Pietsch, director of policy communications.
'It's been 25 years since the rules for the internet have been updated... it is time for Congress to act,' she said, echoing Facebook's previous position that regulation is the responsibility of lawmakers, not private companies.
Haugen, a 37-year-old data scientist from Iowa who has worked for companies including Google and Pinterest, delivered hours of testimony that showed a developed understanding of Facebook's mentality.
'A lot of the changes I'm talking about are not going to make Facebook an unprofitable company,' she said. 'It just won't be a ludicrously profitable company like it is today.'
She returned repeatedly to the idea that Facebook is a platform where human behavior was being manipulated to keep people on the app and engaged.
Haugen noted that she believed Facebook was not intrinsically bad, but rather needed external intervention to guide it away from a place that breeds toxicity.
Experts were uncertain that the revelations from Haugen's testimony would serve to end years of partisan squabbles on the matter.
'It's possible, but far from assured, that today's hearing will mark a real inflection point,' said Paul Barrett, deputy director of New York University's Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.
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