The user cannot access the account for 8 hours. Instagram indicates that the software vulnerability has been fixed.

According to news in the morning of November 1, Beijing time, Instagram said on Monday local time that it had fixed a software bug that prevented thousands of users from accessing the photo-sharing platform for about 8 hours and led to complaints that their accounts were blocked.

"We have now fixed this loophole-it has made it impossible for people around the world to access their accounts and has temporarily changed the number of fans," Instagram, a unit of Meta platform, said in a tweet on Monday.

An Instagram spokesman did not comment on the closure of the account. Several Instagram users tweeted that they had been asked to provide email ID and phone numbers to access frozen accounts.

There were more than 7500 user reports on the outage tracking site Downdetector at 10:09 et, while the number of user reports dropped to nearly 500 at around 6 p.m. Est.

Downdetector collates status reports from multiple sources, including errors submitted by users on their platform. This service outage may affect more users. Meta's shares closed down 6.1 per cent against the backdrop of a general fall in the stock market.