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- A global outage which saw Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp go offline for hours is being blamed on an error during routine maintenance
- The social media sites went offline for more than six hours on Monday, leaving billions of users locked out and costing Facebook an estimated $60 million
- The company explained the outage occurred when a command unintentionally disconnected Facebook data centres from the rest of the world
- Facebook’s Founder Mark Zuckerberg says the incident is the worst outage the company has suffered in recent years
- Meanwhile, calls are growing for Facebook to be investigated officially after a whistleblower alleged the company put profit over public good
A global outage which saw Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp go offline for hours is being blamed on an error during routine maintenance.
The social media sites and messaging service went dark on Monday, leaving billions of users unable access their accounts for more than six hours.
The outage is estimated to have cost Facebook, which owns Instagram and Whatsapp, around $60 million in advertising revenue losses alone.
Vice President of Engineering Santosh Janardhan explained the outage occurred when a command unintentionally disconnected Facebook data centres from the rest of the world.
“This outage was triggered by the system that manages our global backbone network capacity,” Mr Janardhan said.
“During one of these routine maintenance jobs, a command was issued with the intention to assess the availability of global backbone capacity, which unintentionally took down all the connections in our backbone network, effectively disconnecting Facebook data centres globally.”
Founder Mark Zuckerberg said the incident was the most severe the company had suffered in recent years.
“The SEV that took down all our services yesterday was the worst outage we’ve had in years,” Mr Zuckerberg said.
“We’ve spent the past 24 hours debriefing how we can strengthen our systems against this kind of failure.
“The deeper concern with an outage like this isn’t how many people switch to competitive services or how much money we lose, but what it means for the people who rely on our services to communicate with loved ones, run their businesses, or support their communities.”
Meanwhile in a seperate incident, Facebook is facing increasing calls from US and EU lawmakers for an investigation into reform within the business amid claims of corruption.
Whistleblower Frances Haugen has testified that the company placed profits over public good, accusing the social media site of deepening divides, destabilising governments and harming children.
“Facebook’s products harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy,” Ms Haugen said.
“The company’s leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer but won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people.”
