Instagram Stories glitch leaves creators with zero views and missing story rings

Some Instagram users have been facing issues with the Stories feature for the past few hours. Users say that they are posting Stories, but no one’s seeing them. View counts are frozen at zero, and story rings aren’t showing up in followers’ feeds at all.

The issue started popping up around 8-9 hours ago based on multiple Reddit threads in r/Instagram. Users say their stories appear on their own profiles, but the telltale colored ring doesn’t show up for their followers on the main feed. The only way people can see the stories is by manually visiting the profile.

One business account manager with 30,000 followers posted on Reddit saying they got just two views after an hour. A creator with 70,000 followers and a verified badge reported only 15 views in 20 minutes. Another user averaging 300-500 views per story got three views in an hour.

The problem isn’t limited to small accounts. People across different follower counts are seeing the same thing. Some posted stories hours ago that still show zero views or single-digit numbers when they’d normally hit hundreds.

Downdetector registered an elevated spike in Instagram complaints during the same timeframe, with users specifically calling out story-related issues. Most complaints mentioned the app experience and story functionality.

Some users initially thought they’d been shadowbanned, especially those who’d shared political content or news updates. But the glitch is hitting all types of stories regardless of content. One person posted cute pet photos and faced the same issue. Another shared a simple Seattle photo with no caption and got zero traction.

A few Redditors noted their feeds are only showing old stories from a day ago. New story uploads from accounts they follow regularly aren’t appearing at the top of their feed where they should be.

Around 7 hours into the outage, some users reported stories starting to work again. Views began trickling in and story rings reappeared in feeds. But the fix seems inconsistent. Many are still stuck with broken stories hours later.

Meta hasn’t put out an official statement about what caused the glitch or when it’ll be fully resolved. That said, even TikTok users have been facing a similar problem with views and a glitchy app experience. You can read more about that in our detailed coverage here.

For now, creators are holding off on posting time-sensitive content until the platform stabilizes. Some deleted their stories entirely rather than leave them up with no engagement.

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