What typically causes a major Instagram outage?

Major Instagram outages are typically caused by issues within Meta's internal infrastructure. Common culprits include configuration changes or misconfigurations pushed to servers that propagate across their global network, causing cascading failures. The massive 2021 outage, for example, was triggered by a faulty BGP routing configuration change that made Meta's servers unreachable even internally. Other frequent causes include overloaded servers during traffic spikes, bugs in software deployments, DNS failures, or problems with Meta's backbone network that connects its data centers. Because Instagram shares infrastructure with Facebook and WhatsApp, a single underlying failure often brings down all three platforms simultaneously. These outages are rarely caused by cyberattacks and are almost always self-inflicted through routine but flawed maintenance or update procedures.