To add the start of the return of Meta platforms to service

June 12 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms' social media platforms began returning to service after a brief outage that affected thousands of users on Friday, Downdetector.com reported.

A company spokesperson said earlier today that Meta was working to resolve the issue. The outage began at approximately 9:20 a.m. Eastern Time.

Meta has not yet responded to Reuters' request for comment on the cause of the outage.

Down Detector reported that by 11:45 a.m. EST, reports of problems with Instagram and Facebook had decreased significantly. The site monitors service outages by aggregating status reports from multiple sources.

The website showed that at the peak of the outage, more than 113,000 reports of problems with Facebook were recorded, and about 10,000 about Instagram outages.

Because the figures on the Down Detector website are based on reports submitted by users, the actual number of affected users may vary.