Instagram down: Thousands of users unable to send or receive messages

Instagram users faced disruption on Tuesday, with thousands reporting problems sending and accessing direct messages (DMs) on the platform, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.

Reports of the outage began surfacing around 4:30 pm IST, with users in multiple regions saying they were unable to send or view DMs.

Downdetector, which tracks outages by compiling user-submitted reports, recorded a peak in outage complaints around 6pm. However, the actual number of impacted users may vary.

As of the latest update, Instagram has yet to issue a response regarding the issue.

This outage follows a major disruption earlier this year, when a technical issue left hundreds of thousands of Facebook and Instagram users worldwide unable to log in for over two hours. That incident, which started around 8:30 pm on March 5, saw more than 550,000 reports of Facebook disruptions and 92,000 for Instagram, as users turned to rival platform X to report being locked out.

At the time, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone acknowledged the issue on X, stating that a technical issue had affected access but was resolved shortly after. However, no further details on the cause were provided.