Instagram was facing widespread technical issues on Wednesday, with users worldwide reporting that they were unable to send messages on the Meta-owned platform.
The outage appears to have begun in the early hours of the day and continues to be reported worldwide, according to Downdetector, an online platform that provides real-time information about the status of various websites.
At its peak, over 12,000 users reported issues with the platform, with nearly three-quarters of the complaints being registered by Instagram app users.
Los Angeles, Chicago, Phoenix, New York, and Washington were among the US cities providing the highest numbers of user reports.
In India, more than 1,300 reports were registered at the peak of the issue on Downdetector. The site said it had identified an issue with Instagram given “the number of problem reports is significantly higher than the baseline”.
Some users also reported issues with their Instagram feed, sharing that posts were not loading.
Taking to other social media sites such as X, users confirmed they were experiencing the outage and shared a flurry of inquiries and memes.
“Is Instagram down right now? DMs aren’t working for me - is it just me?” one user posted on X.
“I thought I was blocked, but apparently Instagram is down,” another posted.
Failures when sending private messages on the app appeared to be the most common issue for users globally.
Some 18 per cent of user reports on Downdetector pointed to server connection issues.
In these cases, users reported being unable to refresh their feeds or open profile pages.
Users also reported being unable to view old chat history on the platform in some cases.
This could indicate that the Meta-owned platform could be struggling to communicate with its backend servers.
Other services owned by Instagram’s parent company Meta, including Facebook and WhatsApp, appear to be working normally.
Meta has not issued an official statement on the outage.
The Independent has reached out to Instagram for comment.
