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What does ‘this story is no longer available’ mean?

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  • 3 min read

Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms of our time. The media-based platform puts more emphasis on sharing your life through photos and videos rather than by posting text updates. 

Instagram Stories are a true reflection of the platform’s aims and ideologies. An Instagram story is a short video or photo that’s publicly visible to a user’s entire following for up to 24 hours from the time of posting. However, as cohesive and well-made a platform Instagram is, it sometimes runs into issues, and occasional bugs and glitches are no new things to the regular Instagrammer.

In this article, we’re talking about the “This story is no longer available” error, what it means and whether or not you could do something to fix the issue. 

Also read: What does Instagrammer mean?


Why does Instagram say this story is no longer available?

The error generally shows up over a black background where the story is supposed to be accompanied by a message saying that the story is no longer available.

Several reasons can cause the ‘this story is no longer available’ error on Instagram, and the most common ones are as follows.

The person deleted their story

Generally, when a story gets deleted, it’ll be taken out of the story queue at the top of your feed. However, if you still stumble across a deleted story, you’re going to run into this error. 


Account privacy settings have been changed

If someone posted a story from a public account but changed their account to private after posting the story, unless you were already following them before the setting change, you’ll end up seeing this error instead. 

Also read: Why can’t I share Insta­gram posts to My Story? 5 quick fixes


The story has been up for 24 hours

This is quite similar to the story being deleted, as once it has been online for 24 hours, it effectively gets deleted automatically. If you happen to be watching the story around this time, or if it had ended up in your story queue and got deleted later, you’ll see this error. 


Instagram has removed the story

Instagram regularly takes down content that is not following its guidelines. If the story violated any of Instagram’s guidelines, chances are it was taken down, and you ended up seeing this error. At times, the AI wrongly detects content as breaching guidelines and takes it down nonetheless, so this is a relatively common scenario with this error.


 

You’re blocked from seeing their story

This is the least unlikely thing to happen as if someone blocks you from watching their stories you won’t even know if they have posted a story, let alone see this error. However, it could happen that they updated this setting just before you viewed the story or after you had already viewed it once. 

Also read: What happens if you delete the Instagram app?

Yadullah Abidi

Yadullah Abidi

Yadullah is a Computer Science graduate who writes/edits/shoots/codes all things cybersecurity, gaming, and tech hardware. When he's not, he streams himself racing virtual cars. He's been writing and reporting on tech and cybersecurity with websites like Candid.Technology and MakeUseOf since 2018. You can contact him here: yadullahabidi@pm.me.

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