New Delhi–Instagram experienced a widespread outage Wednesday evening, leaving thousands of users unable to access messaging, profiles and updated content on the Meta-owned social media platform.
Reports of problems rose sharply during the evening, according to outage-tracking platform Downdetector.
The number of complaints increased from 436 to 1,993 at about 7:13 p.m. By 7:44 p.m., reported incidents had climbed to nearly 3,706, suggesting the disruption was becoming more widespread.
About 61 percent of affected users reported problems with Instagram’s mobile application. Another 19 percent cited server-related issues, while 11 percent reported difficulty accessing the website.
Users said they were unable to send or receive direct messages. Others encountered blank screens, incorrectly loaded profiles and messaging inboxes that failed to refresh consistently.
Android Authority reported that the outage appeared to be global, with users in several U.S. cities, including New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles and Atlanta, reporting similar problems.
The disruption may also have affected other Meta services. StatusGator reported that some Facebook users experienced loading problems and error messages during the same period.
Meta had not publicly acknowledged the outage despite the growing number of complaints. Its business status dashboard continued to show “No known issues” across major platform metrics.
The company does not operate a public consumer-facing service status page.
Cybersecurity experts advised users against repeatedly resetting passwords or clicking account-recovery links received by text message or email while the disruption continued. They warned that cybercriminals often exploit major outages by launching phishing campaigns. (Source: IANS)
