A picture taken on October 18, 2021 in Moscow shows the US social network Instagram's logo on a ... [+]
Update: Instagram confirmed in a tweet at 8:19 p.m. ET that it had a “brief outage” and the issue that caused it has been “resolved.” Further details were not provided. The original article is below.
It’s not just you. Instagram is currently experiencing a major outage that’s being reported worldwide. And there’s no indication when it might come back online.
Down Detector, which tracks website outages, has received over 98,000 reports of Instagram being down in the past 15 minutes. I confirmed using my own Instagram accounts that the feed simply isn’t loading.
The app says “Sorry, something went wrong,” or just “sorry, couldn’t refresh feed,” whenever trying to load a user’s home feed.
Instagram, much like other social media platforms such as Facebook and TikTok, has become an important tool for individuals and businesses around the world. Instagram recently suffered another outage just a few days ago, though that appeared to be much more localized.
It’s actually rather funny how we’ve grown so dependent on social media tools like Instagram to see and share photos around the world. We take it for granted today, but sending a photo across the globe used to be an incredibly difficult process. Roughly 100 years ago, you needed a cable that spanned the entire Atlantic Ocean. And back in the 1940s, this guy would’ve killed for a technology like Instagram.
Gizmodo Australia was the first to report this most recent Instagram outage when Down Detector had roughly 1,000 reports of an outage.
Meta, the company that owns Instagram along with Facebook and WhatsApp, did not immediately respond to questions emailed Sunday evening ET. I’ll update this article if I hear back.
