Instagram was down — live updates on massive outage affecting DMs

Thousands of users flocked to Downdetector today, reporting problems with the popular social media platform Instagram. When the outage first started, we saw a massive spike in reports, with more than 2,000, which is significant so early in the downtime.

Reports reached a high of around 4,000 today. As far as we can tell, Meta never acknowledged the outage on its status page. Though it appears that the issue with Instagram mostly extended to DMs, which weren't going through.

The outage lasted around 2 hours starting at 6:30 am specific.

The reports are rolling in

We're seeing a massive spike in Instagram reports on Downdetector, with more than 2,500 people jumping to the outage-reporting website to say something is wrong with the beloved social network.

We're also seeing smaller spikes to other Meta-owned social networks, with Messenger sitting at around 500 reports and Facebook at 300.

Meta across the board

It's all Meta at the top of Downdetector, but it's a bit deceiving, as Instagram is the only one with more than 1,000 reports. The other Meta services are worth monitoring, but they're lower.

DMs appear the be the problem

Based on the comments section on Downdetector, it seems that Instagram DMs are the main issue, which could explain why we're also seeing a spike in reports to Messenger. If you're struggling to send Direct Messages on Instagram, know you're not alone, as it seems to be a fairly widespread issue.

More than 3,000 reports

Instagram has gone past 3,000 reports for the first time since the outage began. Clearly, more users are logging in to find that they can't send direct messages, leaving them disappointed and forced to jump on Downdetector to tell the world.

Hopefully, this is just a quick outage that Meta resolves ASAP, but we'll keep you posted as it develops.

Messenger still climbing

While the predominant user reports seem to be about Instagram direct messages, we're also seeing Meta's main Messenger app spike, surpassing 1,000 reports.

'No Known Issues'

Over on Meta's status page, everything is still showing as "No Known Issues." While it's clear that something is wrong based on the raw number of reports, for whatever reason, Meta isn't publicly saying anything.

We've reached out to the social network and will update if we hear back.

Leveling off

For the first time, Downdetector reports on Instagram have updated without a sizable increase. Instead, it went up by less than 100, creating the first leveling of we've seen since the outage started.

My experience

I've been playing with Instagram DMs on and off between posts, and it seems to still be having problems. When I send a message, it doesn't seem to actually get delivered to the recipient; instead, it sits in the thread unsent. Additionally, when I scroll up in a thread, I'm seeing an unable to load older messages error.

While some people are saying it's working again, I'm definitely not among those folks, as I'm still having problems. Clearly, Instagram isn't fully operational yet.

Finally, a big drop

For the first time since the outage began, we're finally seeing a big drop in reports, with Instagram falling to 2,600. This is more than 1,000 reports below the peak, which is a good sign that things are coming back to normal.

For what it's worth, I was able to send a direct message and receive a response on Instagram, so the trouble seems to be resolved for me.

Reports are in a steady decline

Since I last looked at Down Detector, reports have steadily declined dropping from around 3200 to now just under 400.

We're probably in the clear as the issues resolve but I'll keep an eye on things just a bit longer in case it flares up again.

Calling it

With reports well under 250, we're calling this outage. It doesn't appear that things will flare up again.

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