Is Instagram down? This was the question a handful of Instagram users began to ask in early August 2021. The social media platform primarily functions with Instagram Feed and Instagram Stories. While Instagram Stories appeared to be working properly, the feeds of a partial number of users failed to load, resulting in the error: "Couldn't Refresh Feed."
The error was a different one from a previous Instagram outage that was fixed on Aug. 2. The "couldn't refresh feed" issue was newer and remained unfixed as of Aug. 8.
Snopes.com was able to independently verify the "couldn't refresh feed" error. The issue appeared to not be able to be fixed with a password change, reinstallation of the app, or a reset of an iPhone's network settings. Further, the issue also occurred when logging in to instagram.com on a desktop computer, and was not isolated to the mobile device application.
A number of Twitter users reported that the error had been occurring for at least several days, with some of them posting the hashtag #instagramdown
More tweets that reported the "couldn't refresh feed" Instagram error are available through this search.
As of Sunday morning on Aug. 8, it did not appear that Instagram's support team had issued any information regarding the error. We also were unable to find any other reporting on the matter.
It's not uncommon for social media platforms to have downtime. For example, we recently covered a widespread outage of TikTok that lasted several hours.