At approximately 0930 EST, Instagram outages were reported in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, then worldwide. Several million people were logged out of their accounts with thousands more unable to log back on, receiving notifications that their account had been suspended.
Instagram responded with: “We’re aware that some of you are having issues accessing your Instagram account. We’re looking into it and apologize for the inconvenience.” Our page on Instagram immediately lost about 500 followers without any notification from Meta.
One anonymous employee familiar with the matter has reached out confirming this was an intentional “ban-wave” targeting accounts that had “violated Instagram’s policies and procedures consummate with the agreed upon terms and conditions”. Open Source Analysis pages on the Meta platform have noted in the last two months there has been a sharp decrease in IG regulation of war videos coming out of Ukraine. This lapse in regulation that has become a staple of big tech-censorship, seems to have ended with this worldwide ban-hammer.
We're aware that some of you are having issues accessing your Instagram account. We're looking into it and apologize for the inconvenience. #instagramdown
— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) October 31, 2022
