Instagram Outage Locked People Out of Their Accounts, Changed Follower Numbers

The Meta-owned social media site says it has now fixed the problem.

Sean Keane Former Senior Writer

Sean knows far too much about Marvel, DC and Star Wars, and poured this knowledge into recaps and explainers on CNET. He also worked on breaking news, with a passion for tech, video game and culture.

Expertise Culture, Video Games, Breaking News

See full bio

Corinne Reichert Senior Editor

Corinne Reichert (she/her) grew up in Sydney, Australia and moved to California in 2019. She holds degrees in law and communications, and currently writes news, analysis and features for CNET across the topics of electric vehicles, broadband networks, mobile devices, big tech, artificial intelligence, home technology and entertainment. In her spare time, she watches soccer games and F1 races, and goes to Disneyland as often as possible.

Expertise News, mobile, broadband, 5G, home tech, streaming services, entertainment, AI, policy, business, politics Credentials

I've been covering technology and mobile for 12 years, first as a telecommunications reporter and assistant editor at ZDNet in Australia, then as CNET's West Coast head of breaking news, and now in the Thought Leadership team.

See full bio

Sean Keane

Corinne Reichert

Oct. 31, 2022 4:16 p.m. PT

Instagram was suffering technical problems.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Instagram suffered an outage on Monday, with the Meta-owned social media site acknowledging that people were struggling to access their accounts while others saw reduced follower counts. The website Downdetector also highlighted the spike in reports.

Instagram said the issues were caused by a bug that was resolved as of 3 p.m. PT.

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. Sorry! 😵‍💫https://t.co/Q1FBOEI97D
— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) October 31, 2022

The problem also came as some people reported receiving notifications saying they'd been suspended from the platform.

"We're aware that some of you are having issues accessing your Instagram account," Instagram had tweeted this morning around 7 a.m. PT. "We're looking into it and apologize for the inconvenience."