If you woke up to find that your Instagram account was randomly suspended this morning, you’re not alone. A vast number of users have reported that they are unable to access their accounts and are being told that their account has been locked. The Meta-owned social network has acknowledged the issue and says it’s looking into the widespread outage.
“We’re aware that some of you are having issues accessing your Instagram account,” Instagram’s communications team said in a tweet. “We’re looking into it and apologize for the inconvenience.”
We're aware that some of you are having issues accessing your Instagram account. We're looking into it and apologize for the inconvenience. #instagramdown
— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) October 31, 2022
The issue appears to be a glitch of some sort, as opposed to a mass banning of accounts. However, the widespread issue is leading to a lot of confusion, as many users have been told by the app that they had broken its rules. Instagram users are also seeing their follower counts decrease, likely due to a vast number of accounts being suspended.
It appears that the issue began at around 8:30 a.m. EDT/5:30 a.m. PDT, according to reports posted on third-party web monitoring service Downdetector. At the time of writing, more than 4,000 reports have been logged on the website.
TechCrunch’s own Mary Ann Azevedo is among the thousands of users who have been erroneously suspended from the social network. Users who are unable to access the service are seeing a message notifying them that they have “30 days remaining to disagree with this decision.” Instagram hasn’t said what users should do in this case.
I have no idea what happened here but I am not happy about this. pic.twitter.com/RZUgIZz4zS
— Mary Ann Azevedo (@bayareawriter) October 31, 2022
Some users report that they were able to get their account to work again after verifying their email and phone number, while others are still facing issues despite efforts to regain access. In addition to the suspended accounts, some users are having trouble loading the app. Many users have taken to Twitter to note that the app crashes every time they try to open it.
It’s worth noting that Instagram for iOS issued an app update earlier today, which could have led to the problems that users are currently facing, but this isn’t confirmed. Instagram has yet to provide information regarding what could have caused the issues.
TechCrunch has reached out to Instagram and will update this article once we learn more.
Update 6:15 pm EDT: Instagram says it has resolved the issue, which was caused by a bug.
“We’ve resolved this bug now – it was causing people in different parts of the world to have issues accessing their accounts and caused a temporary change for some in number of followers,” the company said in a statement.
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