Meta blames tech issue for widespread Instagram disruption

Issues reported by users began spiking around 6pm New York time, peaking at more than 185,000 about an hour later according to tracking site Downdetector. — Unsplash

Instagram, the popular photo-sharing app owned by Meta Platforms Inc, appeared to suffer an outage Sunday evening (May 21) in the US, with tens of thousands of users reporting that they could not access the service.

Issues reported by users began spiking around 6pm New York time, peaking at more than 185,000 about an hour later according to tracking site Downdetector. The number of reports began to steadily decline shortly thereafter and the service appears to be back online. This was the second widespread disruption in just over two months.