A recent Meta outage has left Instagram users in the UK and US in a state of panic, fearing that their accounts may have been hacked. The outage, which occurred at approximately 3:30pm GMT, affected nearly 130,000 users in these regions, causing the Instagram app to crash.
Users reported being unable to refresh their feed for new content or post anything on the platform. Messages such as “Couldn’t refresh feed,” “No internet connection,” and “Something went wrong.
Please try again later” kept popping up. Even trying to use features like effects or making a Reel resulted in an error message saying, “Effects couldn’t load. Please check your network connection and try again.”
The inability to see their own pictures sparked fears of hacking among users. However, reassurance came in the form of a tweet from one user, clarifying that it was not a hacking incident but rather an outage affecting both Instagram and Facebook, both owned by Meta.
The exact timeline for when these platforms will be fully operational again remains uncertain. Meta has acknowledged the issue and assured users that they are working on resolving it. In the meantime, users can keep an eye on Instagram’s official Twitter page for updates on the situation.
If you find yourself unable to access Instagram, the best course of action is to relaunch the app and check for any internet connectivity issues. Checking Twitter for similar complaints can also help determine if the problem is widespread or isolated.
As Instagram and Facebook work to address the outage, users are advised to stay patient and monitor official channels for updates on the situation.
