Instagram down for thousands of users as app stories stop working

Instagram social media app appeared to be down for thousands of people with users reporting that they are unable to watch stories. Just after 9pm on Friday, May 24, thousands of app users started to report that stories were not loading, with a 'replay' arrow appearing in place of people's photos and videos.

There was a large spike on Down Detector as thousands of people reported the issue, with 80% of the problems reported about Instagram linked to the app.

While some people were not able to view stories at all, others reported that some which have been recently uploaded are appearing distorted.

On X, formerly known as Twitter, one person said:" Instagram stories down for others, yeah?" while another added: "how is instagram always down??". Instagram is yet to comment on the apparent outage.

The issue appeared to be resolved just before 10pm.