Instagram Down: The social networking platform has stopped working

Any attempt to access Instagram from a browser will give you a '5xx Server Error' message , while the application will be static and users, especially millennials are talking

Around 6 am on Wednesday, October 3, 2018, popular social networking site, Instagram became inaccessible to its one billion users, with no apparent reason given by its parent company, Facebook.

Usually, in situations like this, users get information before-hand on any sudden disturbance with their usage of popular platforms. The reasons for Instagram’s vanishing act remains unknown. The site is ranked at Number13 by global traffic analysis website, Alexa.

According to outrage-tracking detector website, Down Detector, the issue mostly affects users in northern Europe, Australia and the west coast of the US. However, Africa and Nigeria can now be counted as some of those affected places.

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Effect of downtime

The effect of this sudden ‘break in transmission’ will definitely be profound on millennials, mostly those who rely heavily on the platform for social interaction, needed distractions and even business.

News platforms like Instablogja will definitely have been stalled by this unexpected downtime. Other vendors who rely on the platform to sell their products and reach their customers will also take a huge hit. Asides them millennials have started freaking out on another popular social platform; Twitter.

 

 

Facebook stocks might also take a hit from the site that is ranked №13 globally. It is not good news for Facebook that is already embroiled in the madness of Cambridge Analytica and the intentional hacking of 50 million users for the 2016 American Presidential Elections from which businessman, Donald Trump emerged the winner.

 

Recently, two of the founders of Instagram also left Facebook over disagreements on the overall direction of the platform. Interestingly, revelations and rumblings have started emerging that certain Instagram users were also hacked by Cambridge Analytica.

What could have caused this sudden downtime?

Nobody knows, but we shall speculate. Sudden breaks like these are caused by maintenance issues, system upgrades, hacks, server crash or security threats. Which one it is, we don’t know. We, however, hope it’s not something so extraneous to impact Instagram long term.

It does seem like a technical issue, however.

Currently, though, our hearts go out to all the business severely impacted by this sudden downtime. Equally, we sympathize with the sweet boys, slay queens, Yoruba demons and small girls with big gods who intended to plaster Instagram with pictures, destined to send admiring tongues to waxing lyrical in the comment section.

For now, let's remain calm. Instagram might be back sooner than later.