Facebook, Instagram & WhatsApp Go Down Globally
What happens when three of the most relied upon social media and two-way communication apps go down at the same time? Chaos, to be brief.
All three went down at 11:40AM eastern USA time, leaving businesses, influencers, advertisers and hundreds of millions who rely on Whatsapp for international communication, scrambling for alternatives.
Technology outages are not uncommon, but to have so many apps go dark from the world’s largest social media company at the same time was highly unusual. Facebook’s last significant outage was in 2019, when a technical error affected its sites for 24 hours, in a reminder that even the most powerful internet companies can still be crippled by a snafu.
This time, the cause of the outage remained unclear. Several hours into the incident, Facebook’s security experts were still trying to identify the root issue, according to an internal memo and employees briefed on the matter. Two members of its security team, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said it was unlikely that a cyberattack had taken place because one hack was unlikely to affect so many apps at once.
It’s not clear as of this writing whether this is a DNS issue as Facebook stated earlier today, or if it’s a DDoS attack. Either way, it’s a stark reminder that no tech giant can plan for every contingency.
As of 5:30PM Eastern USA time, we’re hearing that the problem might be from a misconfiguration of Facebook’s server computers, which were not letting people connect to its sites like Instagram and WhatsApp. When such errors occur, companies frequently roll back to their previous configuration, but Facebook’s problems appeared to be more complex and require some manual updating.
So where do people go when Facebook, Instagram & WhatsApp Go Down Globally.
Ironically, this is the day that BreakoutSocial launched its new website. The Breakout App is a two-way communication platform that allows users to create rooms, group chats, branded rooms, collaborations, and more.
Think of it as the combination of a voice group chat, a free meeting room, a podium, a lecture, a podcast platform but with a twist – it’s the first app of it’s kind to let users be in control of their data – the type of data that Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApps sell daily.
Users own their data on our platform, and using our exclusive Datavault market exchange, they can package and sell their data to the highest bidder and sell it multiple times. We’re not talking about banking info, credit card numbers, or any private information, we’re referring to things like demographics, shopping habits, hobbies, and so on — just as big tech companies do.
Influencers can now earn even more money. Not just by creating content, but also by selling their data.
Brands and Businesses can use our Influencer directory to recruit and sign Influencers. These companies can leverage the DataVault to monetize their data, as well.
The app is available for both types of mobile devices.
The Implications
Beyond the lack of convenience, businesses and influencers who rely upon Facebook and Instagram to advertise or otherwise monetize content will suffer revenue losses.
Facebook will lose ad revenues in the tens of millions of dollars, and these things are just the tip of the iceberg.
In the coming weeks and months, we can expect to see a dissection of the cause (or causes) along with analysis ad nauseam to the implications.
“Today’s outage brought our reliance on Facebook — and its properties like WhatsApp and Instagram — into sharp relief,” said Brooke Erin Duffy, a professor of communications at Cornell University. “The abruptness of today’s outage highlights the staggering level of precarity that structures our increasingly digitally-mediated work economy.”
