Snapchat issues: Why was Snapchat not working and why did my friends' Bitmoji disappear from Snapchat

Snapchat addressed the issues users were facing after a couple of hours.
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Snapchat is a social media app used by over 20 million people in the UK.

You can send and receive images that disappear after a certain amount of time, as well as share photos and video publicly, again for limited periods of time.

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Snapchat has died down somewhat in popularity since the emergence of Instagram Stories, a similar function embedded in the Instagram app.

Nonetheless, there are enough Snapchat users to cause a surge in complaints on Twitter when the app began to not work for some people.

Here’s all you need to know about what happened to Snapchat on Friday December 10 and why Snapchat is not working.

How long was Snapchat down?

Snapchat went down at around 1pm on Friday November 10, with some Snapchat users unable to log into the app.

Downdetector showed almost 2,000 reports of problems with Snapchat within the space of a couple of hours. Photo: Canva Pro.Downdetector showed almost 2,000 reports of problems with Snapchat within the space of a couple of hours. Photo: Canva Pro.
Downdetector showed almost 2,000 reports of problems with Snapchat within the space of a couple of hours. Photo: Canva Pro.
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By 1.37pm, there had been nearly 2,000 reports of issues on Downdetector, a website that tracks online outages.

64 per cent of these issues were to do with login problems, 20 per cent to do with the app in general, and 16 per cent to do with the server connection.

At 2.22pm, Snapchat Support acknowledged the problem on Twitter.

"We’re aware that some Snapchatters are having issues logging in the app right now," the company wrote. “Hang tight, we’re looking into it.”

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At 8.14pm on Friday Snapchat said on social media that the issue had been resolved and asked users who were still having trouble to get in touch with them.

Why was Snapchat not working?

Snapchat has not given any further indication as to what the issue was.

The company was asking users to share screenshots of the issue with them on Twitter as the team worked to get to the bottom of it.

The majority of users were being presented with a message stating: “please check your connection and try again”.

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Others reported that their friends’ Bitmojis had disappeared from Snapchat.

Bitmojis are personalised emojis that are tailored to look like the person who made it, coming with different outfits, expressions, and activities.

Snapchat asked some users to try to uninstall the app, re-download it, and try again.

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