Why is Instagram down?

Two of the biggest social media apps on the planet are currently down, leaving web users without access to either Facebook or Instagram. Its not uncommon for sites to experience hiccups from time to time, but the full-blown crashes users are currently experiencing are far more rare.

The resulting downage is prompting a wave of users to flood Twitter X, where they’re seeking out information about the outage and wasting time until their favorite social media platforms come back online. The longest Facebook and Instagram have been down in the past was less than 10 hours, so we should have service back before the day comes to a close, but the reasoning behind the outage is far more mysterious.

Do we know what’s behind the Instagram crash?

All of Meta’s services, including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, started experiencing issues on the morning of March 5, leaving users with either spotty access, or none at all. Its not the first time the spate of services have experienced issues of this sort, but it is the first time in a while.

The last major Meta outage happened in 2021, and saw Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram all crash for more than six hours. Users are hoping that the latest issue doesn’t persist for nearly as long, but even if it does we should have access back by March 6 at the absolute latest.

The reason behind the crash is still relatively unclear, but in 2021 the social media site claimed its outage was caused by “configuration changes on backbone routers.” It’s possible that a similar culprit is responsible this time around, but the timing couldn’t be worse. The outage comes about on Super Tuesday, the day in which the largest number of U.S. states take to the polls in the presidential primary. Social media is a big part of presidential elections, these days, and people are definitely feeling the absence left by Facebook and Instagram.

Most users appear to be experiencing issues with Instagram’s Notes feature, as well as the app itself, but feeds were starting to repair themselves within a few hours of the original outage. That could point to a more targeted issue, and one that hopefully won’t keep Instagram down for long.