Instagram, owned by Facebook parent Meta Platform Inc, experienced a temporary disruption in services that affected a significant number of users. The company has now confirmed that the issue has been resolved, and most users should be able to access the platform without any further difficulties. A spokesperson from Meta addressed the incident, stating, "Earlier today, Instagram experienced a technical issue that caused accessibility problems for some users. We have worked diligently to resolve the issue promptly for all those who were affected," as reported by Reuters.
The spokesperson did not provide specific details regarding the number of users impacted by the disruption.
Downdetector.com, a website that monitors service outages, recorded a considerable number of incidents during the period of disruption. In the United States alone, there were over 100,000 reports, while Canada experienced approximately 24,000 incidents. In the United Kingdom, the number of reported incidents surpassed 56,000. At the peak of the outage, more than 180,000 users encountered difficulties when trying to access Instagram.
According to Downdetector.com, the disruption began around 5:45pm EST (2145 GMT) on Sunday. Reports of outages gradually decreased, with just over 7,000 incidents recorded as of 8:30 p.m. EST, indicating progress in resolving the technical issue.
Downdetector.com monitors service outages by gathering information from various sources, including user reports. This allows them to provide an overview of the scale and impact of disruptions experienced by popular online platforms.
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Meanwhile, Instagram’s rumoured text-based app built by Meta rumoured to compete with Elon Musk’s Twitter is likely to launch next month.
Meta is meeting with several influencers and celebrities to discuss the future of the app, Lia Haberman, a Substack writer who teaches about social and influencer marketing at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) said. Haberman wrote that the app doesn’t have a name yet so it is referred to as P92, Project 92, or Barcelona. Meanwhile, the new product's tagline so far is 'Instagram for your thoughts'.