Don't Put Your Business On Facebook

1.54am BST 01:54

Summary

Now that Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are coming back into service, after a dramatic global outage, we're wrapping up our live coverage of the outage.

But there are still many questions unanswered, about what caused the outage, what effects the service disruption had for the at least 3.5bn people who use Facebook's apps around the world, and what the consequences of the outage will be as Facebook faces increasing public pressure over its impact on everything from US teens' body image to the survival of democracies around the world.

Here's some of the remaining questions:

Who's responsible? Outside security experts said they believed the server problem that caused a six-hour global outage of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp could have only originated from within the company. But Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg have offered no public explanation for what exactly went wrong, just a blanket apology for the disruption.
Who was hurt? The outage affected potentially tens of millions of users worldwide. Owners of small businesses were also disrupted everywhere from India to Ireland.
What does the outage demonstrate about Facebook's size and influence? "The outage came the same day Facebook asked a federal judge that that a revised antitrust complaint against it by the Federal Trade Commission be dismissed because it faces vigorous competition from other services," the Associated Press reported, even as the brief disappearance of Facebook showed that "nothing can easily replace the social network that over the past 17 years has effectively evolved into critical infrastructure."
Will the outage have a lasting effect on Facebook's stock price, and Mark Zuckerberg's wealth? Bloomberg reported earlier today that the nearly 5% drop in Facebook stock on Monday resulted in a more than $6bn drop in Zuckerberg's net worth, sliding him down one rung of Bloomberg's billionaires list.
How will lawmakers in the US and other countries respond? Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen is slated to testify before the US Senate tomorrow, and is expected to compare Facebook to Big Tobacco, which knew about the deadly effects of its product on users and did nothing. She is also expected to describe how the company's lack of transparency into how its services actually function makes it virtually impossible for regulators to do their job effectively. The testimony will provide a forum for powerful US politicians to weigh in about the company's current crises.

Read the Guardian's full news story on the outage here:

Updated at 2.20am BST

1.23am BST 01:23

Zuckerberg finally posts about the outage: 'Sorry for the disruption'

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg finally commented on his company's global outage, in a Facebook post on his restored site.

Zuckerberg offered no explanation for what had happened.

"Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger are coming back online now. Sorry for the disruption today -- I know how much you rely on our services to stay connected with the people you care about," he posted.

1.16am BST 01:16

KrebsOnSecurity reports Facebook outage was 'a routine update gone wrong.'

Brian Krebs, a longtime computer security expert, wrote earlier today that the changes that caused Facebook's global outage "had to have come from inside the company" but whether "the changes were made maliciously or by accident is anyone's guess at this point."

Krebs' most recent update cites "a trusted source who spoke with a person on the recovery effort at Facebook" and who was told that "the outage was caused by a routine BGP update gone wrong."

The source also explained that "The errant update blocked Facebook employees — the majority of whom are working remotely — from reverting the changes," Krebs reports.

For more on what that means, my colleague Alex Hern's brilliant tweet thread breaks it down.

1.03am BST 01:03

No evidence Facebook outage was malicious or an 'attack,' outside experts say

There was no evidence as of Monday afternoon that malicious activity was involved in Facebook's global outage, the Associated Press reported.

Matthew Prince, CEO of the internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare, tweeted that "nothing we're seeing related to the Facebook services outage suggests it was an attack". Prince said the most likely explanation was that Facebook mistakenly knocked itself off the internet during maintenance, the Associated Press reported.

Facebook did not respond to messages for comment from the Associated Press about the attack or the possibility of malicious activity. The company has not commented on the reason for the outage.

Other outside analysts agreed that there was no sign Facebook going down was the result of an outside attack, rather than internal human error.

Oliver Linow (@OliverLinow)
"We don't know how or why the outages persist at #Facebook and its other properties, but the changes had to have come from inside the company, ....
Madory said it could be that someone at Facebook just screwed up."@DougMadory https://t.co/2UYDo2SInq
October 4, 2021

Updated at 1.06am BST

12.48am BST 00:48

'Facebook and its sites had effectively disconnected themselves from the internet'

Trying to understand, on a more precise technical level, what exactly caused a massive global outage of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and who's responsible?

Employees at Cloudflare, a website security company, wrote up a narrative of how (from their monitoring perspective) the outage went down. There are diagrams.

Cloudflare (@Cloudflare)
"Facebook can't be down, can it?", we thought, for a second. Well it can, and here's how. https://t.co/V0fW2n0a4I
October 4, 2021

Updated at 12.51am BST

12.36am BST 00:36

A brief guide to a world without Facebook

For the people who have spent years monitoring the way disinformation spreads on Facebook, and watching the deadly consequences, living in a world where Facebook was simply not accessible was...quite an experience.

It's something that Sheera Frenkel, the co-author of An Ugly Truth, a new expose abotu Facebook, highlighted as Facebook came back online.

Sheera Frenkel (@sheeraf)
Happening now- Facebook is slowly coming back online. Misinfo and disinfo researchers return to their desks. Snow day over.
October 4, 2021

And it's something that a Guardian's reporter who covered Facebook for years also highlighted:

Julia Carrie Wong (@juliacarriew)
I wrote a quick guide to using the internet while Facebook is down. Don't worry you can still feel bad about your body without Instagram. https://t.co/cb1mzVqzq8
October 4, 2021

12.23am BST 00:23

WhatsApp outage: 'The phones of all your loved ones turned off without warning.'

Facebook has announced that its services are back online, after a roughly six-hour global outage. For people worldwide, journalists noted, it's WhatsApp being down, more than Facebook itself, which may have caused the most disruption to individual people and families.

Investigative journalist Aura Bogado framed the stakes of the WhatsApp outage:

Aura Bogado (@aurabogado)
The repercussions of WhatsApp being down in The Rest Of The World are vast and devastating. It's like the equivalent of your phone and the phones of all of your loved ones being turned off without warning. The app essentially functions as an unregulated utility.
October 4, 2021

Guardian tech reporter Johana Bhuiyan highlighted others chiming in:

Aubrey (@Aubrrrrey_)
Literally the only way I can talk to my dad and brothers in Mexico 😵‍💫 This is why large companies shouldn't be allowed to purchase every single company to expand their portfolio!!! https://t.co/ZOY9Qa0O2Q
October 4, 2021

Chicquie (@Chicquie5)
Little business owners in my African home country heavily rely on Whatsapp and Facebook for their services, I realky hope the issue can be fixed soo for their's sake. https://t.co/TpD9iyT86i
October 4, 2021

𝗛𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗮 (@KateMarieMaz)
It's my main source of communication with fiancé in Turkey, it's heavily used and relied on there https://t.co/kMcPg0vgW6
October 4, 2021

12.14am BST 00:14

Facebook's design makes it impossible to regulate, whistleblower will tell Congress

Facebook's executives, including Mark Zuckerberg have repeatedly told US lawmakers that they welcome government regulation. Facing scrutiny for their internal policy decisions, they have asked politicians to draw the line on harmful content.

But in her prepared Senate testimony, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen plans to argue that Facebook's lack of transparency makes it impossible for regulators to meaningfully serve as a check on the powerful global platform.

"This inability to see into the actual systems of Facebook and confirm that Facebook's systems work like they say is like the department of transportation regulating cars by watching them drive down the highway," her testimony says, according to Reuters. "Imagine if no regulator could ride in a car, pump up its wheels, crash test a car, or even know that seat belts could exist."

"Facebook's closed design means it has no oversight," Haugen's testimony says.

And the company's oversight board, which Facebook created, is "as blind as the public", the testimony says.

Ceclia Kang, one of the authors of An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination, highlighted another part of this argument:

Cecilia Kang (@ceciliakang)
On regulation, FB Whistleblower says: "Tweaks to outdated privacy protections or changes to Section 230 will not be sufficient...A critical starting point for effective regulation is transparency: full access to data for research not directed by Facebook" https://t.co/nVs1PXgde4
October 4, 2021

Updated at 12.24am BST

12.04am BST 00:04

Reuters: Facebook whistleblower to compare social media company to Big Tobacco

Former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen will urge the US Congress on Tuesday to regulate the social media giant, which she plans to liken to tobacco companies that for decades denied that smoking damaged health, according to prepared testimony seen by Reuters.

"When we realized tobacco companies were hiding the harms it caused, the government took action. When we figured out cars were safer with seatbelts, the government took action," said Haugen's written testimony to be delivered to a Senate Commerce subcommittee. "I implore you to do the same here."

Haugen will tell the panel that Facebook executives regularly chose profits over user safety, Reuters reports.

"The company's leadership knows ways to make Facebook and Instagram safer and won't make the necessary changes because they have put their immense profits before people. Congressional action is needed," she will say. "As long as Facebook is operating in the dark, it is accountable to no one. And it will continue to make choices that go against the common good."

Cecilia Kang (@ceciliakang)
FB Whistleblower testimony "When we realized tobacco cos. were hiding the harms it caused, the govt took action. When we figured out cars were safer with seat belts, the government took action…I implore you to do the same here" pic.twitter.com/Oq3OBmkQks
October 4, 2021

Updated at 12.25am BST

11.37pm BST 23:37

'We're sorry.' Facebook is back online, slowly, for at least some users

After a global outage that lasted six hours, Facebook is back online for many users.

The company confirmed in a tweet that its services "are coming back online now", and apologized "to the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us".

Downdetector, a site that monitors outages and had reported millions of user complaints about Facebook being down, said that it was "starting to see reports begin to decline now that Facebook is back up".

Facebook (@Facebook)
To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we're sorry. We've been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us.
October 4, 2021

Facebook began to come back online for American users shortly before 6 pm EST, according to some US journalists monitoring the site.

Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy)
Update: Facebook appears to be back online. The site just loaded for me, albeit very slowly.
October 4, 2021

The outage, which affected Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp worldwide, appeared to be caused by an initial domain name server issue, several news outlets reported, which was then complicated by Facebook's decision to run nearly every part of its internal operations through its own site.

The company told the New York Times that it expected its site to come back online slowly, and that "it will take some time to stabilize and appear for global users widely".

Updated at 12.02am BST

11.30pm BST 23:30

So what made Facebook go down? Alex Hern explains it all

Confused about what causes Facebook's global outage? Guardian tech reporter Alex Hern has a brilliantly clear explanation.

The key takeaway: an initial problem was made much more complicated by the fact that "Facebook runs EVERYTHING through Facebook."

alex hern (@alexhern)
a bunch of friends have texted me asking for a basic explanation as to what the hell happened to knock off all of Facebook so:
October 4, 2021

alex hern (@alexhern)
Facebook (accidentally, we assume) sent an update to a deep-level routing protocol on the internet that said, basically, "hey we don't have any servers any more xoxo"
October 4, 2021

alex hern (@alexhern)
Normally, this would be quite easy to fix. you just send another update saying "oh, don't worry, we have servers, they're here, xoxo". Things still break, it takes a while for the message to spread to all corners of the internet, egg on face, but liveable
October 4, 2021

alex hern (@alexhern)
but Facebook runs EVERYTHING through Facebook
October 4, 2021

alex hern (@alexhern)
So when its servers were booted off the internet, it also booted off… the ability to send that follow-up message
October 4, 2021

alex hern (@alexhern)
and the ability to use the smartcard door lock on the front door to the building that contains the servers that control the system that sends the follow-up message
October 4, 2021

alex hern (@alexhern)
and the messaging service you use to contact the head of physical security to tell them they need to high-tail it to the data centre out east with a physical key to override the smartcard door lock on the front door…
October 4, 2021

The "smartcard door lock" problem Alex is describing is not metaphorical. As the New York Times' Sheera Frankel explained:

Sheera Frenkel (@sheeraf)
Was just on phone with someone who works for FB who described employees unable to enter buildings this morning to begin to evaluate extent of outage because their badges weren't working to access doors.
October 4, 2021

11.20pm BST 23:20

Facebook outage caused by 'DNS routing problems', multiple outlets report

A six-hour global outage of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp was caused by a problem with the company's domain name system, multiple news outlets reported.

Bloomberg (@business)
The outages at Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram occurred because of a problem in the company's domain name system, a crucial component of the internet. Here's what that means https://t.co/7yTLIV4F88
October 4, 2021

Lauren Goode (@LaurenGoode)
"The fundamental issue...is that Facebook has withdrawn the so-called Border Gateway Protocol route that contains the IP addresses of its DNS nameservers." The still unresolved question is why those BGP routes disappeared in the first place. via @brbarrett https://t.co/0g6FijjDHa
October 4, 2021

Updated at 12.03am BST

11.11pm BST 23:11

A 'cascade' of costly outages around the world

Billions of users were potentially directly affected by the outages of Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp today. But Facebook's different platforms are also the basis for small businesses around the world, meaning that small stores, restaurants and delivery services across time zones lost money today, the New York Times reported.

In Ireland, it was a clothing business that sells its products via Facebook and Instagram that felt the effects, with one founder telling the New York Times, "Missing out on four or five hours of sales could be the difference between paying the electricity bill or rent for the month."

"My whole business is down," the owner of a food delivery service in Delhi told the newspaper.

10.56pm BST 22:56

Max Benwell

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp going down can't be going well over at Facebook HQ, but it's very different scenes over on Twitter.

Politicians, comedians and even Twitter have taken advantage of the functioning social media site to poke fun at Facebook's outage and, in some cases, make points about the company's dominance in the tech market.

Twitter (@Twitter)
hello literally everyone
October 4, 2021

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC)

It's almost as if Facebook's monopolistic mission to either own, copy, or destroy any competing platform has incredibly destructive effects on free society and democracy 🧐

Remember: WhatsApp wasn't created by Facebook. It was an independent success. FB got scared & bought it 💬 https://t.co/dGVwza9leR

October 4, 2021

giabuchi (incensed italixn) (@jaboukie)
facebook and whatsapp down vaccination rates abt to go up
October 4, 2021

10.55pm BST 22:55

Facebook appears to be back for some users

The social media site is once again loading for some users, including CNN's Oliver Darcy, and me.

Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy)
Update: Facebook appears to be back online. The site just loaded for me, albeit very slowly.
October 4, 2021

The company told the New York Times it is starting to see the sites coming back online, but they may not be immediately accessible for all global users.

rat king (@MikeIsaac)
LATEST on Facebook: The company said it is seeing the sites starting to come back online, but it will take some time to stabilize and appear for global users widely.https://t.co/nb06SFdmR3
October 4, 2021

Updated at 11.03pm BST

10.52pm BST 22:52

Mark Zuckerberg's personal wealth has dropped by $6bn, Bloomberg reports

The Facebook founder's personal wealth has shrunk by more than $6bn in just a few hours today, Bloomberg reports, as Facebook stock has dropped in the wake of mysterious global outages of Facebook platforms and a whistleblower's allegations that Facebook's internal policies have betrayed democracy and helped facilitate disinformation and ethnic violence.

The Bloomberg Billionaires Index listed Mark Zuckerberg's network as almost $140bn a few weeks ago, but it dropped to only $121.6bn as of early this afternoon, Bloomberg reported.

Bloomberg CityLab (@CityLab)
Mark Zuckerberg's personal wealth has fallen by more than $6 billion in a few hours, knocking him down a notch on the list of the world's richest people, after a whistleblower came forward and outages took Facebook's flagship products offline (via @wealth) https://t.co/vrwwLGaYWg
October 4, 2021

10.51pm BST 22:51

Live coverage: Why is Facebook down around the globe?

This is Lois Beckett, here with live coverage of Facebook's global outage from our West Coast office in Los Angeles.

We'll be updating with updates as we have them. Here's what we know so far:

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp became inaccessible for large numbers of people more than five hours ago, with the the website downdetector.com citing at least 5.6m reports about issues with the company's services from around the world.
The outage has brought down all of Facebook's apps "globally", The Verge reported, "affecting billions of users and millions of advertisers".
Within Facebook, even as engineers are being deployed to fix the problem, the outage has disrupted most of the internal systems employees need to communicate with each other and do their jobs, the Verge reported.
Facebook's platforms acknowledged that "some people" were having issues accessing its services, but provided no immediate explanation for the problem. "We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience," Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone tweeted more than five hours ago.
The crisis comes as Facebook is already facing intense scrutiny about its policies after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who worked on the company's civic integrity team, went public with a series of damning allegations, including saying that "the version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world", and calling the company's policy choices "a betrayal of democracy".

We'll have more soon.

Updated at 10.53pm BST