WASHINGTON — Some users are being forced to log back in to Instagram after an overnight outage cut access to the social media site starting Thursday night.
By Friday morning, Instagram, owned by Mark Zuckerberg's social media company Meta, appeared to be back online for most viewers. Nearly four billion people — about half the world's population — use communication apps developed by the company.
Outage tracking site DownDetector.com shows user reports of trouble with Instagram began around 5 p.m. Eastern Thursday, with a peak of around 6,000 reports around 8 p.m. Half a day later, by 8 a.m., that number had dropped to around 400.
Most of the reported problems had to do with issues logging into the app. It's likely that at least some of the reports Friday morning were caused by users being forced to log back in after Instagram signed them out of their accounts during the outage.
It's unclear what caused the outage.
According to Deadline, it's the second time in as many days that Instagram has had login issues for some users. The outlet reported that a significant number of users were locked out of their accounts on Wednesday in a separate incident.
This week's Instagram woes come on the heels of a massive outage earlier in the month. On March 5, a multi-platform outage hit Meta's various social media platforms. Users were unable to access Facebook, Instagram or Threads for several hours, and some users had to sign back in to their accounts after the outage was over.
That outage, which had more than half a million people reporting problems cross the three social media platforms at its height.
