Instagram users affected by bug, head Adam Mosseri apologises for it

Facebook-owned Instagram head Adam Mosseri has issued an apology for a bug that led to the deletion of user posts. A lot of activists also criticized the bug created by the platform as they were occupied in running an awareness campaign about missing Indigenous women.

These activists were questioning Instagram’s unexplained removal of posts and were curious to know whether they were intentionally taken down or not. Clarifying the company’s stand, Mosseri said that the bug had affected Instagram users worldwide and created problems related to the posting of content, including stories, highlights, and archives.

“Yesterday we experienced a technical bug, which impacted millions of people’s stories, highlights, and archives around the world. For people impacted by this bug, they saw their stories that were re-sharing posts disappear and their archive and highlights stories were missing,” said Mosseri in a series of tweets.

“Many people thought we were removing their content because of what they posted or what hashtag they used, but this bug wasn’t related to the content itself, but rather a widespread issue that has now been fixed,” he added.

However, this is not the first time that an incident like this has created a ruckus. In March, a similar incident happened where Instagram ‘unintentionally’ unveiled a new feature that removes the like count on Instagram feed posts, letting the only publisher see it and it eventually turned out to be a bug, as revealed by Instagram.

“We've been testing a new experience to hide likes on Feed posts. We unintentionally added more people to the test today, which was a bug — we’re fixing this issue and restoring like counts to those people as soon as possible,” tweeted the official Instagram Comms account.