“Clearly Twitter the better app”: Netizens spark memefest on social media as Instagram goes down globally, affecting millions of users

American social media platform Instagram sparked a meme fest online after a technical issue interrupted its services to thousands of people. On May 21, several users reported that the app's feed could not be refreshed and was frozen, while the website only showed a blank page.

DownDetector, a site that tracks outages, says that the first reports of problems started a few minutes after 6 pm ET. At its peak, there were over 175,000 reports, but by 7:30 pm ET, the problem was fixed and it started working again.

The website reported over 100,000 events in the United States, 24,000 in Canada, and over 56,000 in the United Kingdom.

Soon after, Twitter had #instagramdown along with Y’all Instagram, My IG, and My Instagram trending on the platform as netizens began sharing memes and GIFs mocking the situation.

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Twitter users react to Instagram being down

After netizens realized that the photo and video-sharing app was down, they flocked to Twitter and mocked the situation. Several users shared memes and GIFs describing the situation while making fun of the people switching apps to see if the photo and video-sharing app was really down or not.

One of the users also shared how Elon Musk would be laughing seeing users switching to Twitter to pass their time.

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Meta said Instagram was down due to a "technical issue"

Addressing the issue with the photo and video-sharing app, a spokesperson for Meta, Instagram's parent company, told Variety:

“Earlier today, a technical issue caused some people to have trouble accessing the app. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we’re sorry for any disruption this has caused.”

After the issue was resolved, the photo and video-sharing app's PR team on Twitter apologized to its users on Twitter and announced that it was back on track.

Other apps from Meta like WhatsApp, Horizon Worlds, and Facebook, were apparently unaffected by the outage.

There are no indications of problems like the significant data center backbone issue that prevented the company from providing its services for hours in 2021.

The photo and video-sharing app also suffered an outage in September 2022. At the time, users reported problems related to accessing the app, with most of the reports being submitted on the Downdetector being from Los Angeles and New York. Other parts of the world include Asia, Europe, and South America.

Recently, Meta announced a rollout of a verified subscription service, which allows users on its sister social media apps to get blue check marks on their profile. In a statement, Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg said:

“Good morning and new product announcement: this week we’re starting to roll out Meta Verified — a subscription service that lets you verify your account with a government ID, get a blue badge, get extra impersonation protection against accounts claiming to be you, and get direct access to customer support.”

Zuckerberg said that the verification services start at $11.99 per month on web and $14.99 per month on iOS. He also added that the service will soon be released in Australia and New Zealand.

Mark Zuckerberg bought the photo and video-sharing app in 2012 for a whopping $1 billion. Since then, Instagram has seen major changes on the app like the introduction of reels and the ability to share lengthy videos on the platform.