So apparently FB, IG and WhatsApp are all down

[Scarlett]

And they have been for hours.  

Weird.

[PeterPan]

And the world went on.

[Faith-manor]

Just fine here. But I can imagine that if some school uses one of these primarily for communication (football season here and a lot of coaches use FB) then maybe there were some hiccups. 

It would.be worse if WTM was down! 😁

[Terabith]

I find it suspicious that the worst outage for Facebook/ Instagram/ What's App since 2008 occurs the day after a whistle blower spoke publicly about the harm the company has done.  

[whitestavern]

Is it too much to hope they never come back up? 

[Farrar]

My kid said they're going to be down for awhile. He was trying to explain something about it to me, but I didn't really understand the technical whatevers.

The thing that's apparently worse is all the things built on them. Like, lots of people can't log into Outschool, for example. Lots of people can't get to their accounts to read the newspapers they subscribe to. Lots of people can't access ecommerce sites they use. So many people have log ins that rely on Facebook.

[Arcadia]

It was down since 11:30am Eastern time

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/facebooks-very-very-bad-day-services-go-down-as-stock-plunges-in-wake-of-whistleblower-revelations-11633365581
“

Adding to all of that was a widespread outage of Facebook services, including Instagram and WhatsApp, that started just before noon Eastern time. Even the status dashboard Facebook uses to communicate its availability to developers was not working Monday.

By late afternoon, things had gotten so bad the problem could not be fixed remotely, requiring engineers at one of the company’s main data centers to try and reboot servers manually. Facebook’s internal systems were also down, leaving email as the main method of communication, according to reports.

A Facebook spokesman took to Twitter Inc.’s TWTR, -5.79% platform to confirm the issues.
…

Later Monday, Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer admitted on Twitter that the company was having “networking issues,” while The New York Times reported that Facebook had sent a team to a California data center to try to reboot servers manually as employees were locked out of systems and could not even enter the company’s buildings because their systems had locked down.“

[Sneezyone]

2 minutes ago, Farrar said:

My kid said they're going to be down for awhile. He was trying to explain something about it to me, but I didn't really understand the technical whatevers.

The thing that's apparently worse is all the things built on them. Like, lots of people can't log into Outschool, for example. Lots of people can't get to their accounts to read the newspapers they subscribe to. Lots of people can't access ecommerce sites they use. So many people have log ins that rely on Facebook.

Yep. DS couldn’t log into his Japanese class on Outschool.

[Arcadia]

3 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

Yep. DS couldn’t log into his Japanese class on Outschool.

Actually this part is weird though 

“employees were locked out of systems and could not even enter the company’s buildings because their systems had locked down.”

11:30am eastern time would be 8:30am pacific time. Won’t there be security guards on duty already to let employees who forgot their employee badge in? Also, there should be a way to unarmed the security system temporarily so that access is not dependent on employee pass.

[marbel]

This is hardly important but I like Instagram for recipes and garden/nature sites. It's not really social media for me, as I don't post or have followers. I like scrolling through my feed as it's very relaxing. All beauty no drama! So I'm missing it today.

[Katy]

Neither worked for me all day, but they’re up now.

[Arcadia]

14 minutes ago, Katy said:

Neither worked for me all day, but they’re up now.

WhatsApp is still down for me. We also have skype and slack for personal and my husband also has WeChat, Amazon chime and Microsoft teams for work so we aren’t really affected.

[AmandaVT]

[Forget-Me-Not]

1 hour ago, Farrar said:

My kid said they're going to be down for awhile. He was trying to explain something about it to me, but I didn't really understand the technical whatevers.

The thing that's apparently worse is all the things built on them. Like, lots of people can't log into Outschool, for example. Lots of people can't get to their accounts to read the newspapers they subscribe to. Lots of people can't access ecommerce sites they use. So many people have log ins that rely on Facebook.

According to my techy kid, they screwed up their Border Gateway Protocol so badly that they locked themselves out of their own servers and had to fix it one server at a time with a connected laptop. 

Edited October 4, 2021 by Forget-Me-Not

[mlktwins]

I belong to a few cross-stitching FB groups.  i scroll through them a few times a day - makes me happy.  I missed it today.  That is the thing I would miss most if FB went away.

[Arcadia]

1 hour ago, Forget-Me-Not said:

According to my techy kid, they screwed up their Border Gateway Protocol so badly that they locked themselves out of their own servers and had to fix it one server at a time with a connected laptop. 

For anyone who wants to read a techy but simplified explanation 
https://blog.cloudflare.com/october-2021-facebook-outage/

[mom2scouts]

I texted my very techy kid (with punctuation!) and asked if this was another Russian hack and he also said this was an internal mistake. He says the mistake cost them about $60 million today. Oops!

ETA: The news is reporting $6 billion loss! Bigger Oops!

Edited October 5, 2021 by mom2scouts

[mommyoffive]

Zuckerberg Loses $6 Billion in Hours as Facebook Plunges (msn.com)

[chiguirre]

WhatsApp isn't a big deal in the US, but globally it causes mayhem when it goes down. We found out about the outage almost as soon as it happened because dh relies so heavily on it to communicate with Latin America.

[Spy Car]

Is it correct that the personal data of some 1.5 billion users has been compromised by a massive hack?

Not a good week for the Facebook empire.

Bill

 

[Amira]

This really was a big deal for a lot of people outside the US.  It’s hard to imagine how reliant many places are on FB messenger and WhatsApp to the exclusion of every other communication platform.  And if your friends aren’t in the same country you are, or if you don’t have minutes on your phone (it’s really common in a lot of places to buy minutes only on an as-need basis, so you usually can’t make calls), then there’s no way to communicate. 

I do everything on WhatsApp.  Schedule orthodontist, dental, and medical appointments.  Arrange for covid tests. Make plans with friends, both English and Arabic speakers.  Talk to my kid’s teachers.  Talk to my students and send them all graphics and links during class.  You can order dinner or groceries on WhatsApp, although I personally don’t.  Keep in touch with friends who have moved away (although at that point, FB messenger fills in the gap in case your phone number changes too many times when you’ve moved).  Coordinate with Airbnb hosts.  And a million other things.  Entire businesses here rely on WhatsApp.  

[BlsdMama]

And as I’m just discovering they were all down now, it’s safe to regard myself as non-techy...

[theelfqueen]

11 hours ago, chiguirre said:

WhatsApp isn't a big deal in the US, but globally it causes mayhem when it goes down. We found out about the outage almost as soon as it happened because dh relies so heavily on it to communicate with Latin America.

Same. It is my primary contact with DS and DIL. I had to resort to email lol

[Lanny]

We are big users of WhatsApp and our HOA uses WhatsApp. And yesterday the long outage. I read several online articles about Signal VS Terminal, and would like to use Signal, because it is End to End Encrypted and because it is Open Source.

But DD, who is in Europe temporarily, has Telegram on her Android phone and she doesn't want to remove it.  So I installed Telegram. There is apparently a way to do a "Secret Chat" with one contact and have it End to End Encrypted.  I am going to go to their web site, again, and read about what I am suppossed to do to get that to work.

Almost always, there is a "Learning Curve" to things that should be intuitively obvious.

Hopefully whatever caused the long outage at Facebook is fixed now.

[Hannah]

12 hours ago, Amira said:

 Entire businesses here rely on WhatsApp.  

Its the same here in South Africa.  A lot of people couldn't do business yesterday.

[HeartString]

I’m seeing all sorts of conspiracies from my conspiracists friends.  Apparently they think Facebook shut down to suppress some sort of news that “they” don’t want us to know. Fun, fun.  

[Terabith]

Maybe the reason they went down is the same sharks that attacked google attacked Facebook and What's App?  

https://slate.com/technology/2014/08/shark-attacks-threaten-google-s-undersea-internet-cables-video.html

[Excelsior! Academy]

23 hours ago, Terabith said:

I find it suspicious that the worst outage for Facebook/ Instagram/ What's App since 2008 occurs the day after a whistle blower spoke publicly about the harm the company has done.  

Yep.  And a day before the hearing (deposition? trial? something like that.)

[Lanny]

Here in Colombia many people (and many businesses) are very dependent on WhatsApp.  Some of the local radio stations give out their WhatsApp phone number. Some of the businesses do the same. For a number of years, I bought dog and cat food to be delivered by (almost always) exchanging text messages. I do that when I need things delivered from a local pharmacy/Mini Market for example.

DD is overseas in Europe for Semester Abroad now. I remember 2 or 3 mornings ago when we were eating (or finishing) Breakfast that DD made a Voice Call on WhatsApp. She talked with DW for a long time and I got in a few words. Approximately 45 minutes?  I think it was mostly trip planning.

When she finishes in Europe she will return to the USA, so for us that's also Overseas and we will continue to use WhatsApp for most of our communications.

I communicate a lot with her via email, which I prefer, because I can then search back for things I need. Traceability.

As I wrote previously, I did install Telegram yesterday, because DD has that on her phone and she plans to continue using it.  If we could use Signal I would prefer that, because of the End to End Encryption being the default.  

I spent approximately one (1) hour trying to send her a test message that is End to End Encrypted, via Telegram, without success, but we can, at least communicate, if WhatsApp goes down again, although not with End to End Encryption.

Thankful for WhatsApp for many reasons and it usually works perfectly!

[kbutton]

[mommyoffive]

Facebook’s Apps Went Down. The World Saw How Much It Runs on Them. (msn.com)

[mommyoffive]

Facebook ends 'WFH forever' rule after mega outage (msn.com)

[Arcadia]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2021/10/08/facebook-messenger-outage-instagram-whatsapp-down/5995676001/
“Facebook and its apps, which include Instagram, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, started experiencing issues around 3 p.m. ET Friday, according to Downdetector.com.

About two hours later, the company said the outage had been fixed and all of its platforms should be operational.

"Sincere apologies to anyone who wasn’t able to access our products in the last couple of hours," the company said in a statement to USA TODAY. "We fixed the issue, and everything should be back to normal now."

The outage arose from a configuration change, but was not related to Monday's outage, the company said. Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger and Facebook Workplace were impacted, the company said. 

WhatsApp was not part of the outage, the company said.”

[Arcadia]

On 10/7/2021 at 6:57 AM, mommyoffive said:

Facebook ends 'WFH forever' rule after mega outage (msn.com)

https://www.techradar.com/news/facebook-ends-wfh-forever-rule-after-mega-outage
“"I think that it’s possible that over the next five to 10 years - maybe closer to 10 than five, but somewhere in that range - I think we could get to about half of the company working remotely permanently,” Zuckerberg said. A Daily Mail report Thursday claimed that Facebook was ending this policy completely - a report Facebook tells TechRadar is flat out wrong.

"The Daily Mail article is completely inaccurate," a company representative told us. "There has not been a change to our policy. As we announced in August, we are working to return our teams safely back to the office in January 2022."”