Meta Platforms's Instagram was down for thousands of users in the U.S. on Wednesday morning, according outage tracking website Downdetector.com. There were more than 6,549 incidents of people reporting issues with the platform as of 9:16 a.

Instagram is down for thousands of users, according to Downdetector. The outage detection site found that just under 10,000 people reported the social media platform was not operating normally. There was a massive spike in reports from users just before 2pm on Wednesday.

Instagram may be experiencing an outage Wednesday morning. Reports of Instagram being down have surged on downdetector.com. Instagram appeared to be down for some users Wednesday morning. Downdetector.

Thankfully, despite the fickle nature of most app users, Bluesky seems to have managed to break through and become a really promising alternative. And thanks to the fundamental nature of its open protocol, anyone can build their own apps that piggyback off the Bluesky social graph.

Bluesky is the hot new internet hangout for the people who got a little tired of all the horrible stuff that’s been happening on Twitter/X over the past couple of years. And now it could end up forming the basis of a new Instagram competitor, for anybody that isn’t happy about Mark Zuckerberg and Meta’s sudden pivot to more right-wing politics.

Pixelfed, a decentralized and ad-free Instagram alternative, now has apps on iOS and Android, as reported by TechCrunch. The iOS app launched today, while the Android app launched on January 10th.