Instagram said that a caching issue has caused some users to see notifications saying “Tomorrow Is Election Day” on Tuesday.
Several Instagram users seeing the notification have posted screenshots of it on social media with quizzical messages about the alerts. Instagram replied to several concerned users via Twitter on Tuesday to explain the mishap.
“Thanks for raising! While we turned off the “Tomorrow is Election Day” notice last night, it was cached for a small group of people if their app hadn’t been restarted,” said Instagram in its standard reply to users on Twitter via its @InstagramComms account. “It’s resolving itself as people restart. Today, people will get “It’s the Last Day to Vote” at the top of feed.”
The caching issue for Instagram comes as its owner, Facebook, has touted its role in registering millions of voters and being a leader in spreading election information via social media.
“This year, we launched the largest voting information campaign in U.S. history, with the goal of helping 4 million people register to vote. Today, we hit our goal,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, in a post on his platform last week. “We estimate we’ve helped 4.4 million people register across our apps — based on conversion rates we calculated from states we’ve partnered with.”
Instagram and Facebook have not specified exactly how many users and voters saw the erroneous notifications on Tuesday.
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
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