Instagram outage affects thousands in US, Downdetector reports

On Thursday evening, Meta Platforms' Instagram experienced a significant outage affecting thousands of users across the U.S., with over 19,431 incidents reported to Downdetector.com by 7:25 p.m. ET. The platform's issues were widespread, but by 8:34 p.m. ET, reports of the outage had dropped dramatically to just 429 incidents, indicating that the issues were largely resolved for many users. Downdetector, which tracks outages through user-submitted reports, noted that the actual number of affected users might differ from reported figures. Meta has not yet responded to inquiries regarding the outage. This incident highlights ongoing challenges with platform reliability that can impact user experience significantly.