New Delhi: Instagram users across multiple regions experienced disruptions on Tuesday morning as the popular social media platform stopped working for many people. Some users posted messages that the app was not loading, and others complained that they could not refresh their feeds and use various features.
The failure soon led to a spurt in complaints across the internet, with many users resorting to outage monitoring sites to ascertain whether the problem was universal. According to the data provided by Downdetector, the number of reports about Instagram issues surged significantly, so it is possible to assume that the disruption was impacting the users in multiple locations.
Reports of Instagram outage surge
Downdetector reported that the problems with Instagram started growing around the first days of March 11. The site also registered a sudden increase in complaints, with over 12,000 outage reports being registered at around 9.15 AM.
This was quite a number of reports, which were normally at the baseline of around 23 reports. The abrupt spike shows that the disturbance must have started soon before the spike and immediately disseminated when more users tried to use the platform.
The outage map also implied that the problem cannot be a localised problem and that it seemed to affect users in various locations.
App and server issues reported
According to Downdetector, the majority of complaints involve the issues with the Instagram application itself. Approximately 74 per cent of the users stated that the app did not load, or it stopped working when they were browsing.
An 18 per cent report was associated with connection problems with the server. The issues caused some users to be unable to refresh a feed or open up a profile page.
A smaller number of users, approximately 4 per cent, reported issues related to the feed or timeline to be problematic, either loading the posts very slowly or not showing them at all.
Users report problems accessing features
Most of the users claimed that they were in the middle of using the app when it just stopped. Some said that it was not loading pictures and posts even after reopening the application.
Other users also stated that they also could not refresh their home feed or read Instagram Stories. Some of them have mentioned that they made some mistakes when attempting to open profiles or engage with posts.
Up to now, Instagram did not provide an official statement as to the cause of the outage. Users are still checking Downdetector and social media platforms to see when the service would be restored to normal.