KEY POINTS
- Instagram down reports crossed 10,000 in the United States
- Users reported login failures, feed refresh issues and app crashes
- Meta said it was investigating the Instagram down incident
Instagram was down for more than 10,000 users in the United States late Wednesday, disrupting access to the Meta Platforms owned social media service, according to Downdetector.
The Instagram down outage emerged around 8:30 PM Eastern, when Downdetector recorded 10,108 incident reports from US users.
The service aggregates real time reports from consumers and network data to identify disruptions.
Short term outages have affected Meta platforms several times over the past two years often linked to configuration changes or software updates.
Instagram, with more than two billion monthly active users, is critical for advertisers.
Andy Stone, a Meta Platforms spokesperson, said the company was “aware that some people are having trouble accessing Instagram and are working to restore service as quickly as possible.”
Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said centralized platforms create “single points of failure that can ripple across economies and public discourse.”
Nicole Ellison, a professor of information at Michigan State University, said outages disproportionately affect creators relying on Instagram for real time sales.
Meta has not provided a restoration timeline. Past incidents suggest service is often restored within hours.
The Instagram down event underscores dependence on global platforms worldwide and users alike.
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