Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp go down

[Polybius]

Source: CNN

(CNN)Facebook's week just went from bad to worse.

Facebook (FB), Instagram and WhatsApp all suffered outages midday Monday, according to public statements from the three Facebook services.

"We're aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products," Facebook said on Twitter. "We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience."

Outage tracking site Down Detector logged tens of thousands of reports for each of the services. Facebook's own site would not load at all for about an hour on Monday; Instagram and WhatsApp were accessible, but could not load new content or send messages.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/04/tech/facebook-instagram-whatsapp-outage/index.html

---

This is almost certain to be the largest social media outage in history. Feels like 2005 for me.

[FarPoint]

1. I just checked....

Not loading for me either....

[634-5789]

2. Obviously, End Times is upon us. Make peace with your maker.

[Bucky]

75. I am shaking my "maker" right now

[tiredtoo]

79. lol

[calimary]

3. Ooooooh, somebody's out for revenge...

[Dakota Flint]

4. Good!

[Tetrachloride]

13. Please don't jump to conclusions: there are fragile countries that depend onFB

Possible reasons: technical, criminal hackery or cyber warfare.

Some of my livelihood and my key friends ‘ livelihoods depend to a degree on Facebook.

[Dakota Flint]

20. Still good!

the need to break their addiction to one of the greatest threats to humanity.

[IronLionZion]

22. Important enough for China to block it nationwide from time to time

China claims their event organizing capabilities are used for nefarious purposes.

[Bucky]

76. It's almost like you're making an argument for breaking up a monopoly

[hlthe2b]

5. Supposedly worldwide outage. Curious, for sure.

and concerning to me only from the standpoint this could reflect hackers going after other targets like this in the future. If it is Zuckerberg sending a message then I hope this backfires spectacularly. If it is hackers, then I hope the US and our allies finally get tough on such actors/acts.

[Budi]

6. FB stocks were down as well, following the big reveal interview

Think it was on 60 Minutes.
apparantly FB employees were pre-warned of what may be exposed in that interview.

[Budi]

8. Here's the interview with the FB whistleblower

Link to tweet

Remember the angry hate content of FB in the 2016 campaign?

Political parties buried HRC's name, ground it into the dirt while her successes & lifetime humantitarian works went silent.

Her concerns & future policy, words only she spoke, at the time were drowned out by vitriol, hate, & oppo messaging by MSM & FB leading the charge.

Supreme Court
Citizen's United
Fairness Doctrine
Women & Children & poverty
Etc.

FB needs to be busted up for capitalizing on the destruction of our Democracy.

[Walleye]

9. The stock market is not feeling at all well today

[malthaussen]

7. Still suffering at 1:45 EST, not "suffered." n/t

[vanlassie]

10. Isn't there a FB whistle blower testifying before Congress

tomorrow?

[Polybius]

12. This could be on purpose

Zuck thinks he's slick.

[IronLionZion]

27. Qanon sites are probably still up

for folks who want to lose their minds on conspiracy theories

Even on Freeperville, they're claiming China is attacking us since we don't have tough guy Donald Trump.

[Archae]

11. The main thing I do different with Facebook...

I do NOT get my news, weather or sports from Facebook.
Not at all.

I use Messenger to converse with two of my sisters.

And I get messages from friends.

[hollygolively]

33. I don't get my news from FB either.

I'm an IT person. I hate the fact so many people think FB or Wikipedia are reliable sources for information. They are not.

Facebook has, clearly, for a long time, been all about profit and not about making the world a better place by connecting everyone.

[sdfernando]

73. I am in IT as well and fully deleted my facebook account years ago

I don't do any social media at all...No twitter, snapchat, whatsapp, tiktok, youtube....nothing! If my friends can't call or at least text my cell then too bad.

[caraher]

57. Nor do I

I do post some news items but I can't imagine having FB as a primary information source.

Otherwise it's just about sharing goofy memes and chatting with folks in Messenger

[PatSeg]

69. Same here

I get NYT's alerts and come to DU, but I never rely on Facebook for news or politics. The political discussions I have tend to be in private groups with like-minded people.

I keep up with friends and family and share jokes and memes. For me, it truly is "social".

[Tommymac]

72. Unfortunately you have to have a FB account to use the Oculus Quest 2 VR headset.

Zuckerface linked them last year after he bought Oculus.

I hate him with a passion. And I don't hate many people other then TFG and his close enablers.

[ShepKat]

14. oh no !!!

I better tell everyone and post it on fac..... oh wait lol

[Nittersing]

15. huge blow to independent vaccine research

[NNadir]

44. Best response by far.

I never joined Facebook so I'm never going to know what I'm not going to miss.

[IronLionZion]

59. There's always YouTube

[Marthe48]

16. fb is has been down for about an hour for me

Yesterday words with friends 2 was down all day. between dejoy and outages online, we'll have to go back to ham radios and cb's.

[Budi]

32. LOL. 'Words With Friends' via ham radios and cb's.

SNL should do a skit

[Marthe48]

36. How about smoke signals? Or drums?

I heard a joke a few years ago: The wagon train is circled for the night, campfires glowing in the dark, the sound of drums in the air. The assistant wagon master meets the wagon master and says, "I don't like the sound of those drums!" And the wagon master says, "Neither do I, but their regular guy is off sick tonight."

I still laugh.

[Budi]

43. That is a funny story

I s'pose drums & smoke signals were the original form of 'social media', then.

[Drum]

94. Hence, my username on DU

[Shell_Seas]

17. Twitter, TikTok, and SnapChat still up.

[Marthe48]

39. Other sites are fine

You Tube, DU (TG).

[LiberalFighter]

18. My browser says it can't find the site. Hmm

[Paper Roses]

89. Same here, 5 hours, cannot find server per message.

I thought it was my computer because everything else seems to work.

[Champp]

19. "...some people are having trouble..." FB is blaming users

How Republican is that?

[NurseJackie]

24. How is that blaming users?

[IronLionZion]

30. Users should pull themselves up by the bootstraps

[Champp]

42. .

[Champp]

40. An honest, non-Republican FB statement would be:

"Facebook is having technical problems. Many users are unable to connect."

It's subtle, but it's kind of a standard Republican-values gambit to shift blame on to others.

TFG did it all the time. He claimed ownership of everything "good" that happened, and always always always blamed others for the bad shit he caused. It's the Republican playbook, and it is slimey.

[NurseJackie]

88. Some users, many users... it's a distinction without a difference.

There was no blame-shifting. I can only imagine if they actually said "many users" then someone would have complained about THAT as well since it appears to be nearly ALL users, and "many" is an understatement.

Honestly.

[Champp]

97. I respectfully disagree

Last edited Tue Oct 5, 2021, 06:52 AM - Edit history (1)

And reiterate my point: it is standard Republican strategy to always blame others. By not saying "FB is having problems..." it is in my estimation a subtle, but meaningful shirk of responsibility. They are saying and implying: the users have a problem, not plainly admitting: FB has a problem.

So you can give them a pass on this example, as you are so inclined, but if you look about the twists and turns of republican-style rhetoric, you will--I contend--see this sort of thing over and over and over again. It's what they do: dodge responsibility, blame others.

It's a fundamental perversion of truth. Totally darkside.

[NurseJackie]

102. Lulz

[IronLionZion]

21. So soon after the 60 minutes episode about them

hmmm....

This article claims what most likely happened is their network engineers pushed a configuration update that inadvertently locked them out. So they need to fix things at their local data centers before reconnecting to public DNS services again.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/10/facebook-instagram-whatsapp-and-oculus-are-down-heres-what-we-know/

[Budi]

25. Yup, the frenzy followed the 60 Minute interview, FB knew what was being revealed.

Consequences of too big & politically driven, to fail.
Or so they thought.

[OhZone]

23. I blame myself -

It happened just after I typed "fnord."

[davepdx]

62. I'm still laughing. Hilarious!

[rdking647]

26. it looks like they got hacked

from what i heard their DNS record got deleted.

(think of the DNS record as a roadmap to an address. you have the address but dont know how to get there)

[Budi]

28. That's a good explanation.

"think of the DNS record as a roadmap to an address. you have the address but dont know how to get there"

[Sapient Donkey]

70. I think it's deeper than just a DNS issue, but rather a BGP routing problem

Basically removed them from the internets. The fact it's taking so long to resolve this is concerning, though.

[zehnkatzen]

29. Wow! This is serious!

Gotta let my online friends know.

Better log on to facebook and ...

... ah.

[Marthe48]

38. lol

I made a blanket fort on the couch, curled up like a hermit

[ashredux]

31. This is planned, this is a "so see what happens if you close us down"

Timing…timing…timing

[Budi]

34. Oh, they'll just remake themselves with a cool new Name.

I believe the Mueller report mentioned social media, & how it was used to drive prepared propaganda favorable to some & unfavorable to others, on a massive scale.

We all saw it as it happened.

[IronLionZion]

35. Maybe Myspace took them down

Facebook doesn't have much competition

[Budi]

61. What was one of the 1st chat rooms? My Space & AOL, but there was another one too.

Cannot recall the name tho.
It was an early one.

Found it.
ICQ
(I seek you) ☺


Anyone remember using it?

[ChazInAz]

64. Yes, I do.

[IronLionZion]

65. And IRC (Internet Relay Chat)

none of them had the tremendous ad revenue of FaceBook though

[Budi]

67. Oh yes! IRC.

[Polybius]

80. And my favorite, the BBS

I still log on sometimes to them.

[Budi]

82. BBS? I've never heard of it, but that's just me.

[IronLionZion]

86. Bulletin Board System

that's old school

[Budi]

104. Thanks. Found this good read from 2016, The Atlantic

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/506465/

The Lost Civilization of Dial-Up Bulletin Board Systems
A former systems operator logs back in to the original computer-based social network.

Snip
Once the web arrived in the mid-1990s, it seemed inevitable that the BBS would die off.

But every mass extinction has its holdouts. Even today, a small community of people still run and call BBSes. Many seek the digital intimacy they lost years ago; 373 BBSes still operate, according to the Telnet BBS Guide, mostly in the United States. Many are set up to be accessible via internet-connected tools like Telnet, a text-based remote-login protocol originally designed for mainframes.
More...

It still exists!

[Auggie]

37. Doubt they'd purposely lose the ad revenue or piss off advertisers

[Budi]

49. Appears someone with their hands in the propaganda business that FB allowed, wants to remain hidden

'All roads lead to Putin'~ Speaker Pelosi quote.

[BoomaofBandM]

41. Baby boom coming in 10 months.

[LeftInTX]

46. LOL!

[pfitz59]

45. I'm unable to access the site

Thought they might have banned me after all my time served in FB jail!

[apnu]

47. FB's current rank is #34 on the Fortune 500.

That this network ‘mistake’ outage would happen to them, on this this day, after the 60 minutes thing is shocking.

The paranoid side of me says this is intentional, the timing is too convenient and smells like they’re scrubbing the site hard.

And like all things FB, its heavy handed and easily seen.

The not-paranoid side says, holy incompetence Batman! FB’s change controls must be trash! What ninny is running the show there?!

[Budi]

52. I'm thinking 'inside job' also.

There are some powerful people with billions invested in the desruction of American Democracy.
Someone's protecting themselves.

[apnu]

68. I am not convinced the motive is to destroy democracy...

… that certainly is the affect. Zuck and the board aren’t fascist party members. They’re incompetent corporate animals mucking about with things they know little about. They’re attempting to remove human emotion from business decisions under the laughable ‘data driven’ moniker. As we’ve learned, they are quite vested in human emotion, crassly recognizing ‘engagement’ is deeper when the content is inflammatory.

I believe what they built is a very naive system that relies on the good intentions of its users. But the users have ill intent.

They, Zuck and co, are holding on for dear life to the monster they created. Much like the GOP, few are actual fascists or authoritarians, but they hang on to all that because it benefits them financially at the moment.

[Budi]

74. Thanks. There is plenty of truth in your post.

We're all just lab rats to the monied & powerful.

[Pinback]

100. Good take.

As Frances Haugen said in her 60 Minutes interview, over and over the company has made decisions that prioritize profit and growth over public benefit and safety. (Just as most other corporations would do if they had the freedom from regulation that Facebook enjoys.)

[apnu]

103. Indeed.

My mention of "data driven" and "inflammatory" was lifted directly from Haugen's interview.

I work for a big company. I have peers who are in bigger companies. We speak regularly on the folly of "data driven" business decisions.

It sounds nice, but what it really is, MBA by way of spreadsheet. It is everything Orwell (and others) warned us about.

[LiberalFighter]

48. Facebook being down this long indicates to me they lack necessary protection.

[IronLionZion]

50. They don't stop at the drugstore before screwing people

[bucolic_frolic]

51. Who's the hero? /nt

[Budi]

56. The whistleblower named Frances Haugen. 15 yr veteran of FB.

Link to tweet

Article at CBS
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-60-minutes-polarizing-divisive-content/?__twitter_impression=true

[Chakaconcarne]

53. They've been hacked to prevent conservative voices from being heard....

I'm good with that.

[Budi]

58. That works ! 👍

[Polybius]

54. This is MASSIVE

It's the largest and longest social media outage in world history. It will be talked about for decades to come.

[Bucky]

77. 2093: Grandpa in his Atomic Rocker reminisces about the blip of '21

[orleans]

78. lol! (nice picture you just drew there!) nt

[Captain Zero]

55. Trump family deleting all their WA criminality

Took everything down ?

[ShazzieB]

60. Still not working...

It's now 2:21 and still, down. That's a lot of lost ad revenue!

Gotta go out and do some errands. We'll see if anything's changed by the time I get back.

[PatSeg]

71. I don't recall it being down so long before,

though I suppose it is possible. That's okay, I was busy working on something else.

[DownriverDem]

63. Met a lot

of left leaners on FB. I report and hide ads or posts I don't like. We are a tight little group. I don't see the RW crap most folks see.

[PatSeg]

66. I rarely ever do either

I unfriended a small handful of people a long time ago and most of what I see now is very reasonable.

[tiredtoo]

81. After watching the interview on 60 minutes last night

I decided to post something nasty or hatefull today. I have been posting a "Happy Sunday" note asking others to join in with their happy moments of the week gone by. Then I found only anger motivates the people. So I can't post a piss them off post. Now I am angry.

[videohead5]

83. I Bet

Facebook has been shutdown by hackers. This is not a regular outage. This smells like hackers to me.

[sakabatou]

84. It's possible

[Pepsidog]

85. Social media has spread like the plague and infected the minds of so many people. It is time to

start regulating blatantly false lies that recklessly is intended to misinform and damage the country. Make social media and media platforms responsible for allowing false statements intended to harm others. Regulate these platforms and take away their platforms as a consequence for allowing others to peddle harmful disinformation and harmful speech. Without an ounce of evidence platforms should not permit nutty cures not based in any credible science. Get the Alex Jones and Carlson’s off the air.

[ananda]

87. I think Zuckerberg is basically a fascist.

He was a Trump cohort.

[durablend]

90. Something must be real fucky for it to be down this long

[OhZone]

91. That's it!

I'm firing up Netscape and logging into MySpace and Vine!

[Polybius]

93. I'm logging into Hot Or Not

Wonder if I'm still rated an 8+.

[bucolic_frolic]

92. I've been getting unusual requests on eBay the past week or so

From people obviously ESL challenged, and that causes strange results in eBay software. Wonder if it's related to Facebook, Instagram, and GOP TX hackers.

[Lasher]

95. It's back up now.

[The Fifty Stateman]

96. Let's make it Permanent

I can do without all three, especially Zuck's garbage heap!

[BumRushDaShow]

98. "Facebook said on Twitter."

I don't think anyone could have composed a more ironic phrase.

[Budi]

105. 😄

Lmao.

FB had to communicate via Twitter!

[pfitz59]

99. FB is back online, but

is acting strangely. Not all functions working. IT has a job to do.

[Mosby]

101. Statement from Facebook

Link to tweet