Filenews 5 October 2021
For at least six hours the three major social media outlets on the internet. Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp went out of service at about 18:30 Cyprus time and came back just before one am.
However, the reintroduction of the three major social media was accompanied by several problems, which those in charge struggled to solve. Characteristic was the fact that the messenger worked on mobile phones, but not on computers, as it sent a message "there is no internet connection". Computer connection problems also existed on Instagram, which the company's technicians managed to resolve after a while.
The thriller, however, with ramifications on multiple levels with the crash of major social media on the internet. Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, turned into a financial crash for Zuckerberg's company, which had very large financial losses.
Zuckerberg's shares plummeted first, with losses for the social media mogul estimated at more than $7 billion. for the company, the losses are estimated - so far - at EUR 50 billion. dollars.Those who tried to connect via a computer to Facebook saw the message "Site down", while on mobile devices they were unable to see updates and new messages, both on Facebook, Instagram, as well as on Whatsapp. The commonality of all these platforms is that they simply belong to the same "family", that of Facebook.
The first estimates of the cause and the "secretiveness" of Facebook
This condition had already lasted more than two hours, while the reason for the cause of the interruption had not been clarified. Perhaps a message that appeared on the screens of some users and which said "5xxx Server Error" may "indicate" a problem on the central server in Menlo Park, California.
Facebook's owner company has chosen secretiveness in the past regarding the causes that have caused similar problems, even after they have been resolved. In 2019, for example, when it suffered another major crash, it simply said that "some routine maintenance work" led to this development.
Some early estimates cite a potential cause of a problem with the Domain Name (DNS) system, which allows web addresses to take users to their websites. A similar crash that had been presented in July by the cloud company Akamai Technologies resulted in many large websites around the world falling.
Security experts monitoring the situation said the interruption can be caused by a configuration error, which may be due to an internal error, without excluding sabotage.
Facebook stock's share value fell more than 5% on the Nasdaq
It is worth noting, however, that the Website Down Detector - which traces such crashes on major websites based on reports from users - reported earlier today damages, mainly in densely populated areas such as Washington and Paris, but as time went by, the problems spread to other parts of the world.
Another service that tracks online crashes and their impact, NetBlocks, estimates that the more than two-hour hiatus has already cost the global economy $160 million and dropped Facebook's share price on the Nasdaq by more than 5%.
Facebook: We're working to come back today
A similar message from Facebook itself at 7:22, while the Instagram and WhatsApp accounts asked for "patience" from their users.
For its part, Twitter, found the opportunity to troll the situation and "welcome" the mayhem that took place on its own platform on the occasion of the "crashes" of its competitors, with the simple "Hello literally to all", as most users have turned to it in the last few hours.
Facebook outages happen relatively rarely, but they tend to have a very big impact, mainly because they affect three of the world's largest social apps. This is shown, after all, by the fact that hashtags #instagramdown and #facebookdown are currently the top Twitter on a global scale.
