Instagram outage affects thousands worldwide; leads to a Twitter memefest
Meta's popular social media platform Instagram was down for thousands of users around the globe on Thursday (September 22). The brief outage that started at around 10 pm IST led to several disgruntled users heading to Twitter to complain about the issue. According to the outage tracking website Downdetector.com, as many as 24,000 users had trouble accessing the platform.
Why does this story matter?
Social media websites going through an outage have become a regular occurrence these days. What's worrying about this trend is that most companies do not come out and say what went wrong. For the most part, they don't even recognize the issues until users feign outrage. It is certainly not too much to expect a better grasp on these problems from billion-dollar giants.
The outage lasted for around 2 hours
Several users around the world faced issues with their Instagram accounts starting from around 10 pm IST on Thursday. The outage did not last that long, as the social media app was up and running by 11:55 pm IST. The problems faced by users were wide-ranging. Most of them found their apps crashing, while some were unable to log in to the application.
What was the public's response?
Instagram users were surprised at first when they encountered some of the aforementioned issues. As is always the case these days, people headed to Twitter to find out whether others were facing the problems as well or not. Once they understood that Instagram was down for many, that led to a meme and GIF fest on the microblogging platform.
Here's how one user responded to the outage
What were the common issues faced by users?
Apart from app crashes and the inability to log in, several Instagram users faced server-related issues as well. There were also reports of users not being able to load new posts on their feed, open Stories, or send and receive direct messages.
What did Instagram say about the outage?
At around 11 pm IST, Instagram confirmed that some people were "having trouble accessing Instagram." The Meta-owned company did not specify what caused the outage though. The company also said that it was working to "get things back to normal." Almost an hour later, it tweeted that "And we're back! We resolved the issue that caused today's outage, and apologize for any inconvenience."
Many users faced issues even after Instagram's announcement
Under Instagram's tweet that confirmed that the issue was fixed, several people replied that they were still facing problems. Many users complained about not being able to log in to their accounts.
