Instagram Down, Displays ‘5xx Server Error’ Message
Popular social media app Instagram experienced some downtime on Monday, January 28. Visitors to the site received a “5xx Server Error” message when trying to access instagram.com. The service seemed to have been restored a short while later, but not before causing some social media users to panic.
While some users are reporting that Instagram has been restored, via Down Detector, others are leaving comments to reflect they’re still having trouble accessing the popular app.
“Oh no…” user Soly Hendra said.
“Down in SWEDEN,” user D reported at 7:49 p.m.
Some users opted to report their status and solicit followers at the same time.
“Hi guys. back up in bc, please follow me @kyliee.slater i’ll follow you back!” user kylie s said.
Instagram app users saw something a little different from visitors trying to use the site in a browser.
“Can someone tell me how to fix the ‘refresh feed’ issue?” user Lanai Ware said. “My page is working again but my feed still won’t refresh. How do i fix that?”
This isn’t the first time Instagram users have seen the “5xx Server Error” message. In December 2017, tech company Famoid published a post about the 5xx Server Error, detailing its potential causes and troubleshooting the error for solutions.
“No website can avoid running into the occasional glitch and problem, and when you consider how vastly complicated many social media websites are, it’s not surprising that their users encounter lots of different errors and difficulties at various times. There are so many different aspects to these websites that things are bound to go wrong occasionally, and a common error which many Instagram users seem to come across is the Instagram 5xx Server Error. This is perhaps one of the most frustrating, as it usually won’t allow you to access the website at all, and often doesn’t give very much information besides the error code,” the post reads, in part.
Famoid details that the 5xx Server Error is not specific to Instagram; it’s a common code used across the internet for server errors of all kinds, specified by the lead digit, 5. The 5xx error is a non-specific server error, in place of the more specific 500 Internal Server Error, 501 Not Implemented, 502 Bad Gateway, 503 Service Unavailable, 504 Gateway Timeout, 505 HTTP Version Not Supported, 506 Variant Also Negotiates, 507 Insufficient Storage, 508 Loop Detected, 510 Not Extended, and 511 Network Authentication Required.
Unfortunately for pic-hungry social media users, there is nothing they can do to mitigate any server error Instagram experiences; it has to be addressed by Instagram. All users can do is report the error and find something else to do in the meantime.
