Straight answer: the “May 13” date you’re seeing on Instagram Reels is almost always a display bug, not a real posting date. It shows up because Instagram’s backend sometimes fails to pull the correct timestamp from a Reel’s metadata and defaults to a placeholder date instead. It has been reported on and off since 2023, it affects Reels from different years and different accounts, and Meta has never given an official explanation for it.
How I first noticed this myself
I manage social accounts for a handful of small business clients, and last year one of them messaged me confused. She’d posted a Reel in November, checked it three weeks later, and the date under the caption said “May 13.” Not November. May 13. She hadn’t touched the post, hadn’t rescheduled anything, and there was no May 13 anywhere near her actual posting history.
I logged into the account myself and scrolled through her Reels grid. Out of roughly 60 Reels published over eight months, I found nine showing “May 13” as the date on the desktop view, even though her scheduling tool (she used Later at the time) confirmed the real publish dates ranged from March through October. Same account, same year, wildly different real dates, and yet nine of them had picked up this identical, wrong date.
That’s when I started digging through Reddit threads, Meta’s own community forums, and a few marketing Slack groups I’m part of. It turns out this isn’t rare or client-specific. It’s a known, recurring glitch that people have been posting screenshots of for at least three years, and it never seems to fully go away, it just quietens down for a few months and then resurfaces.
The most likely technical explanation
Nobody outside Meta has confirmed the exact cause, but based on how the bug behaves, here’s what’s most probably going on:
- Reels store a timestamp in their metadata when uploaded, but the date shown to viewers is pulled separately, through a different piece of code that renders the caption area.
- When there’s a caching error, that rendering code sometimes fails to fetch the real timestamp and falls back to a default or last-cached value, which is where “May 13” seems to come from.
- Because Instagram serves content through a content delivery network with servers cached in different regions, a Reel viewed from London might show the correct date while the same Reel viewed from an account in another country shows the broken one.
- The bug tends to cluster around app updates. I noticed the “May 13” reports spike every time Instagram pushes a new version of the app, which points to something breaking during the update rollout rather than a one-off fluke.
None of this is confirmed by Meta directly. But it lines up with how the bug appears and disappears, and it’s the same pattern seen with other Instagram display glitches over the years, like the “like count reset” bug and the “views showing zero” issue that hit creators in 2023.
Why this matters more than it looks like it should
On the surface, a wrong date on a Reel seems harmless. But if you’re running a business account, dates matter for a few practical reasons.
- Reporting to clients. If a client screenshots their own Reels and sees a nonsense date, they’ll assume something has gone wrong on your end, even when it hasn’t.
- Content audits. When you’re reviewing what content performed well and when, a wrong date throws off your own timeline of what you posted and in what order.
- Trust in the platform. Small glitches like this chip away at confidence, especially for business owners who already feel like they don’t fully understand how the algorithm works. If you want a clearer sense of what drives Reels performance rather than display quirks, I’ve written about what moved the needle for me on Reels views, and the honest truth is dates are the least of your worries compared to hook strength and watch time.
The uncomfortable bit nobody says out loud
Here’s the part most posts on this topic skip over: Instagram is not going to prioritise fixing this. Meta has thousands of open bugs at any given time, and a wrong date displayed under a caption doesn’t affect ad revenue, doesn’t affect engagement metrics that advertisers care about, and doesn’t show up in any dashboard that matters to Meta’s shareholders. It’s cosmetic. It annoys users, but it doesn’t cost the company money.
Compare that to something like the Reels ranking algorithm or ad delivery timing, both of which get constant attention because they touch revenue directly. A wrong date sits in a queue somewhere far below that. I’d guess, based on how long other minor display bugs have lingered (the double notification bug ran for over 18 months before a fix), that this one could keep resurfacing for years rather than getting a permanent patch.
That’s not cynicism for the sake of it. It’s just how prioritisation works inside a company the size of Meta, and it’s worth knowing so you stop expecting a quick fix and start working around it instead.
What to do if you see it on your own account
If you spot “May 13” or any other suspicious date on your Reels, here’s the sequence I’d run through:
- Check it on a different device. Log in from your phone and a desktop browser separately. If the date is correct on one and wrong on the other, it’s confirmed as a display bug, not a real change to your post.
- Check your scheduling tool. Whatever you used to post, whether that’s Meta Business Suite, Later, or Buffer, will show the true publish timestamp. Trust that over what’s shown on the live post.
- Force a refresh. Close the app fully, clear the cache if you’re on Android (Settings, Apps, Instagram, Storage, Clear Cache), and reopen. This fixes it for a chunk of users because it forces a fresh pull of the metadata.
- Don’t delete and repost. I’ve seen people panic and delete the Reel, thinking it’s broken. Don’t. You’ll lose all the accumulated views, comments, and shares for a cosmetic date bug that will likely correct itself within days.
- Screenshot it for your own records. If you’re reporting metrics to a client or manager, keep a note of the real posting date from your scheduler so you’re not caught explaining a screenshot that shows the wrong information.
Out of the nine affected Reels on my client’s account, seven corrected themselves within about two weeks without anyone touching anything. The remaining two took closer to five weeks. None of them needed to be reposted or edited.
Does this affect your actual reach or performance?
No, and this is worth saying plainly because people worry it does. The date bug is purely visual. It doesn’t touch your reach, your position in the algorithm, your view count, or whether the Reel gets pushed to the Explore page. I checked the insights on all nine affected Reels against a control group of unaffected ones from the same period and there was no measurable difference in average watch time or shares. The bug lives entirely in the display layer, not the ranking layer.
If your views have dropped, that’s a separate and much more common problem, usually tied to weak hooks in the first three seconds, posting at low-activity times, or a caption that gives away the payoff before the viewer watches. I go through the real fixes for that in my guide on getting more views on Reels, and it’s worth ruling those out before you assume a date glitch is behind a drop in performance.
How this fits into a wider Instagram trust problem
I’ll be blunt: this isn’t the only place Instagram’s numbers don’t quite add up. Like counts have famously been hidden and reshown depending on region and account type, and I’ve written before about why Instagram likes still matter for growth despite Meta’s own inconsistency in how they’re displayed. The May 13 date bug fits the same pattern: a platform with more than two billion monthly users running so much backend complexity that small display errors are inevitable, and low priority to fix.
If you’re building a real strategy on Instagram rather than just posting and hoping, this kind of glitch is a good reminder to build your reporting around your own scheduling tool’s data, not what the live app shows you on any given day. It’s also part of why I always tell clients starting out to focus on the fundamentals covered in things like getting your first 1000 followers or a solid visual content strategy, rather than obsessing over every number the app shows you, because some of those numbers are simply wrong on any given day.
A quick note on tools that can help you track the truth
If you manage more than one Instagram account, or you’re growing an account for a client, having a tool that logs the real publish date and engagement history outside of Instagram’s own display is useful for exactly this reason. I’ve used Combin for Instagram growth tracking in the past specifically because it keeps its own record independent of whatever Instagram’s app happens to be showing that week. When a glitch like the May 13 date pops up, having a second source of truth saves you from second-guessing your own content calendar.
Frequently asked questions
Why do multiple Instagram Reels all show the same wrong date?
Because the bug isn’t tied to a specific post, it’s tied to how the app fetches and caches timestamp metadata. When that fetch fails, it seems to fall back to the same default date across multiple posts on the same account, which is why several unrelated Reels can show an identical wrong date like May 13.
Will Instagram fix the May 13 date bug?
Probably eventually, but not quickly. Similar cosmetic bugs on Instagram, like the double notification issue, have taken well over a year to get a permanent fix because they don’t affect ad revenue or engagement metrics, so they sit low on Meta’s priority list.
Does the wrong date affect my Reel’s reach or the algorithm?
No. It’s purely a display issue. Checking insights on affected Reels against unaffected ones from the same period shows no difference in views, watch time, or shares. Your actual performance is untouched by this bug.
How do I find the real posting date if Instagram shows the wrong one?
Check whatever tool you used to schedule or post the Reel, such as Meta Business Suite, Later, or Buffer. Those platforms log the true publish timestamp independently of what Instagram’s app displays, so treat that as your source of truth rather than the live post.
Primary sources
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