Instagram returned online after an apparent outage on Sunday evening in the U.S., with some sites showing that 175,000 people were unable to access the popular photo- and video-sharing app.
Meta, the parent company of Instagram, blamed the problem on a technical issue, Bloomberg reported. Instagram noted in a tweet on Sunday that the service had returned.
“Sorry for the trouble - we had a brief outage earlier and resolved the issue that caused it,” the tweet stated.
Instagram is back! Sorry for the trouble - we had a brief outage earlier and resolved the issue that caused it. #instagramdown
— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) May 22, 2023
Issues reported by users began to peak at about 6 p.m. EDT, Bloomberg reported. Downdetector.com, a website that tracks app outages, showed that user reports of Instagram outages started spiking at 6:09 p.m. EDT and rose for several hours, rising as high as 185,000 customers without service.
Service appeared to be restored for users shortly before 8 p.m. EDT, Fox Digital News reported.
Meta, which owns Instagram along with Facebook and WhatsApp, issued a statement after the issue was fixed.
“Earlier today, a technical issue caused some people to have trouble accessing Instagram. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we’re sorry for any disruption this has caused,” a company spokesperson said.
Gizmodo Australia was the first to report Sunday’s outage when Down Detector had roughly 1,000 reports, Forbes reported.
