In a statement released late Monday, Facebook announced its platforms were up and running again; this came after the massive global interruption that crushed its main site, WhatsApp, and Instagram for hours earlier that day.
The interruption caused a cascading disruption in data centers which brought their platforms to a halt
In a blog post, Facebook stated the engineering team of the company found the cause of the global outage to be changes in the configuration on the backbone routers; this resulted in network traffic between their data centers.
As a result, it caused issues and interruptions in communication. Facebook also added the interruption in network traffic engendered a cascading effect on the communication in data centers, bringing the platforms to a halt.
Facebook and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms are back online after a massive global outage plunged the social networks into chaos for hours. Facebook cited a "faulty configuration change” and says there’s no evidence user data was compromised. https://t.co/xwonErba69
— The Associated Press (@AP) October 5, 2021
The company added that although these platforms are back up and running, their team is still actively working on making the platforms go back to their normal operations.
Facebook likewise emphasized that by far, they believe the root cause for the global outage was a faulty change in configuration. They also highlighted that user data was not compromised during this outage and there’s no evidence to support that claim.
Spokesman of Facebook, Andy Stone, likewise posted an apology in a Twitter post, adding he was happy to announce the services of Facebook are back online.
According to a report of DownDetecter, thousands of Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Oculus users all over the world reported the outages at around 11 am eastern time.
Facebook apologized for the inconvenience caused by the outage
Stone also wrote in the tweet Facebook was aware that some users were having problems accessing their apps and products. He said they were working on getting their system back to normal as fast as possible. The Facebook spokesperson also apologized for any inconvenience caused by the global outage.
On the other hand, the company blog post acknowledged many people and businesses in different parts of the world depend on them every single day to stay connected. Facebook understands the impact that the interruption had on people’s lives and their responsibility of keeping their platform users informed of service interruptions.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized after a major outage affected Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp for nearly six hours.
READ: https://t.co/Dy5JEYYNMT pic.twitter.com/ODiF9YCC9q
— GMA News (@gmanews) October 5, 2021
In the blog, the company also apologized to those who were affected by the outage. Facebook added that they are working to have more understanding of what happened on Monday in order to make their infrastructure more resilient to these types of problems.
Meanwhile, due to the global outage, the stock of Facebook dropped as much as 5% during the trading session on Monday.
Haugen was revealed as the woman who filed anonymous complaints against the social media giant, stating Facebook’s research shows how they magnify misinformation and hate, which leads to higher polarization. She likewise alleged that Instagram can harm the mental health of teenage girls.
