Instagram outage resulted in random suspensions, reduced follower counts

What you need to know

• An Instagram outage has caused many users to be locked out of their accounts.
• Subscriber counts on many accounts also dropped unexpectedly following the outage.
• Instagram acknowledged that users were experiencing problems, and many accounts appear to be recovering since this morning.

If you found yourself suddenly suspended or banned from your Instagram account on Monday morning, you're not alone. The social media platform is having a case of the Mondays after an outage that has caused many users to be locked out of their accounts.

As noted by The Verge, the outage has caused users to receive notices that they were suspended or banned from their accounts for no particular reason, which included many of The Verge's employee's accounts. In addition, users have noticed significant dips in their follower counts, including celebrity profiles and even Instagram's official account losing millions of followers.

The Verge also notes that the problems are primarily experienced by iPhone users, although it's not clear why. Fortunately, users receiving erroneous suspension notices shouldn't have to worry, as the problem is being addressed. Things appear to be improving significantly since 10 am ET at the height of the outage.

Not long after the outage started, Instagram acknowledged that "some of you are having issues accessing your Instagram account" and said that it was "looking into it."

Instagram has been on the mend, although DownDetector is still in the red at the time of writing. Some Instagram users have even joked that the outage is somehow Elon Musk's fault now that the billionaire now owns Twitter (which has nothing to do with Instagram).

Instagram, like many other social media platforms, is no stranger to outages and dealt with quite a few major ones last year. It even tested an "outage alert" feature to let users know when the platform was experiencing problems.