Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram has once again been hit by a major social global outage on Monday, as millions of its users troop to other social networks to air their displeasures. ayokinews.com reports
Outages were confirmed by Tracker Downdetector as it shows outage in densely populated areas in North America, parts of Europe and Africa, in what is being described as a global outage.
Users trying to use the social media platforms were greeted with a message saying “Something went wrong. We’re working on it and we’ll get it fixed as soon as we can.”
Addressing the situation, Facebook spokesman, Andy Stone tweeted, “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products,” a message which sounds similar to what was being displayed on WhatsApp and Instagram.
A major outage by social platforms is a very rare scenario but certain technical issues could necessitate its temporary apps shutdown (offline).
The outage has since boosted the engagement of other rival social media platforms as the shutdown persisted for hours without a quick resolve.
“Signups are way up on Signal (welcome everyone!),” the messaging app, wrote on Twitter, which kept functioning amid the outage.
Adding the messaging app tweeted; “We also know what it’s like to work through an outage, and wish the best for the engineers working on bringing back service on other platforms.”
Facebook hasn’t deemed it fit to publicly brief members of the public on the possible reasons for the major social outage but cyber security experts noted they had found possible signs that online routes which leads people to the social giant were disrupted.
Speaking on the possible reasons for the social outage, the Chief Technology Officer at web company Cloudflare, John Graham-Cumming, tweeted saying “Facebook and related properties disappeared from the Internet in a flurry of BGP updates.”
Speaking further Cumming said that before the social giant services went off the grid, “we saw a large number of … changes (mostly route withdrawals)”.
The social outage comes a day after a whistleblower named Frances Haugen, went live on a US television to reveal her true identity after revealing troves of documents alleging that the social giant was aware that its platforms was fueling hate and harming children’s mental health.
The 37-year-old data scientist from Iowa, who has reportedly worked for major companies which includes Google and Pinterest, stated during an interview with CBS show titled “60 Minutes” that Facebook was “substantially worse” than any platform she’d ever seen in her life before.
The social media giant, Facebook, had since after Haugen’s revelation been in an embroiled firestorm with members of the US Congress and The Wall Street Journal detailing how the social media giant was aware of the fact that its products which includes Instagram were harming children, most especially young girls in the aspect of body image.
