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Instagram fixed a bug causing a service outage that impacted users to varying degrees, as people reported disabled accounts and repeated app crashes.
Instagram officially acknowledged the issue today at 10:14 AM Eastern time, sending out the following tweet:
We’re aware that some of you are having issues accessing your Instagram account. We’re looking into it and apologize for the inconvenience. #instagramdown
— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) October 31, 2022
Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, sent out a tweet four hours later to confirm they’re still working on it:
We’re working on this 👇🏼 https://t.co/atZ3PgBOYg
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) October 31, 2022
The problem persisted for roughly eight hours. However, not all users were affected by it, and those affected reported various issues.
Let’s take a look at what we know about the outage.
Instagram Outage – What’s Going On?
Reports started circulating on Twitter around 10:00 AM this morning that users were losing thousands of followers in an apparent purge of Instagram accounts.
Instagram is doing some sort of purge, it appears. Lots of people are having a bad day over there. @mosseri pic.twitter.com/CYIxEzbc9H
— Alex Kantrowitz (@Kantrowitz) October 31, 2022
The sudden decline in follower count is likely related to another ongoing issue. Some users logged in to see lost followers, but others were told their account was disabled.
Lots of Instagram users reporting accounts being randomly suspended or locked out
Many accounts also showing big drops in followers pic.twitter.com/JOyBBPXVgN
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) October 31, 2022
Thousands of disabled accounts could equate to thousands of lost followers. However, people who could access their accounts had a hard time doing so.
While following the # instagramdown hashtag, the most frequent complaint I noticed was that the app crashed or couldn’t be used at all.
Although it was a trending topic on Twitter all day, we’re uncertain how widespread the problem is.
We ran a poll on LinkedIn, which currently has 425 votes, asking people if the Instagram outage impacted them.
Only 20% of respondents said they were affected:
This is consistent with the poll we ran on Twitter asking the same question, though with a smaller sample size.
On Twitter, 24% of respondents said they were affected, and a third of respondents weren’t even aware of a problem.
Have you been impacted by the ongoing Instagram outage making headlines today? Let us know how in the 🧵👇
— SearchEngineJournal® (@sejournal) October 31, 2022
SEO professional Alan Muther replied, saying he was on the receiving end of an account suspension as well:
Yes. I got a pop up saying my account was suspended too.
— Alan (@alanmuther) October 31, 2022
Instagram Outage – Now Fixed
At 6:00 PM Eastern time on Monday evening, Instagram confirmed it fixed the bug, stating:
“We’ve resolved this bug now – it was causing people in different parts of the world to have issues accessing their accounts and caused a temporary change for some in number of followers. Sorry! 😵💫”
Is it resolved, though?
Looking at the replies on Twitter, users continue having trouble accessing their accounts.
We’ll continue following this story and update this article with more information when it becomes available.
Featured Image: PixieMe/Shutterstock