Instagram’s chat service appears to be working incorrectly, with users unable to send messages.

Issues began around 9:30am today, according to Down Detector, with users experiencing issues with the news feed, stories, messaging, and posting.

As well as in the UK, users in Japan, Poland, France, and Belgium are experiencing outages.

It appears that the issue is mainly affecting users in Europe, but there has nbeen no statement from either Facebook or Instagram about the outage.

WhatsApp, which is also ran by Facebook, seems to be operating without issue.

The Independent has reached out to Instagram for more information.

However, it was also recently met with an anti-trust lawsuit from 48 states in the US, arguing that the social media giant has been engaging in anti-competitive behaviour. As a result, WhatsApp and Instagram could potentially be separated from Facebook.

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