On Monday, October 31, 2022, many Instagram users around the world had their accounts suspended or deleted for no reason. This was a bug that the social network has since corrected. By apologizing.

On Monday, October 31, 2022, many Instagram users around the world had their accounts suspended or deleted for no reason. This was a bug that the social network has since corrected. By apologizing.

Monday, October 31, time stood still for many Instagram users who could no longer access the social network. Upon logging in, a message was displayed telling them that their account had been suspended or even deleted. Without explanation, and without valid reason. A drama for all story addicts who can’t spend a few hours without exposing themselves on the global digital gallery by giving news to their subscribers…

The case agitated the Web and Twitter all afternoon on Monday, the problem having started around 2 p.m. according to the first reports. Hardware failure, bug, cyberattack… Many hypotheses and rumors have been raised, especially since Meta – the parent company of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp did not react immediately. In the end, it was indeed a simple bug, which was resolved in the evening, around 11 p.m., as announced by Instagram. Contacted by The world, the company was not however able to provide more explanations. On Twitter, Instagram apologized to users: “We have now fixed this bug which caused problems accessing accounts in different parts of the world and caused a temporary change in the number of followers. Sorry!”

Instagram Blocked: What Happened?

A large-scale problem affected Instagram this Monday, October 31, since the beginning of the afternoon. Users were no longer able to log into their account. The Meta group’s social network encountered great difficulties, which were reminiscent of the worries that the company had encountered in 2021. This time, no storage problem, accounts have simply become real ghosts . Concretely, many people indicated that they had been banned from Instagram. On Twitter, many of you have reported a bug. Between 2:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m., the hashtag #instagramdown was picked up 15,000 times.

According to the findings of The Verge, iPhone users were more affected than those on Android, who seemed to have been less affected by this strange phenomenon. The problem was not confined to France, testimonies having flowed in from all over the world, in all languages. This wave of massive suspensions resulted in a sudden drop in the number of subscribers on various famous accounts on the platform – minus 3 million for Cristiano Ronaldo between Sunday and Monday! For his part, Hugo Clément, journalist, questioned on Twitter: “There’s something going on on Instagram, isn’t it? Lots of suspended accounts, dizzying drop in followers for lots of big accounts. Crash in progress?.”

Instagram outage: a global problem with no explanation

On DownDetector, the site specializing in digital service outages (Internet, operators, social networks, applications, etc.), the number of reports of problems on Instagram skyrocketed from 2 p.m. on Monday, October 31, 2022. Proof of a concern on a very large scale. If you are affected by a new issue in the future, we invite you to follow the page dedicated to Instagram to see the evolution of the situation.

Concretely, users ended up with this message when they opened their Instagram application on their smartphone: “We suspended your account on October 31, 2022.” It was also specified that the person concerned has 30 days to contest the decision. At the bottom of the message, you indeed had the possibility to appeal Instagram’s decision by pressing “Dispute the decision”. In addition, you can consult our practical article which details all the steps to recover a blocked account.

Problems had already been observed on September 22. They concerned stories posted by users – photos or videos visible for 24 hours by those who follow the account in question. In addition, the Meta group had deplored a general bug on its WhatsApp messaging application, but also on Facebook and Instagram. All the functions of these services had been disabled for several hours. A coordination problem between the different data storage centers was at the origin.