Facebook back online after more than 6 hours, Mark Zuckerberg loses $6 billion as result...

[midian182]

What just happened? In a classic case of never thinking things can get any worse, under-pressure Facebook and its suite of apps have just had their worst outage since 2019. It took almost six hours for the issues to be resolved, during which time the internet was flooded with memes, and Mark Zuckerberg lost over $6 billion.

The problems started on Monday just before noon ET when people began reporting that they couldn't access Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or WhatsApp—even the Oculus app and website were impacted. It would be almost six hours before regular service resumed.

When Instagram & Facebook are down. pic.twitter.com/mVFlVOOCOC

— Netflix (@netflix) October 4, 2021

The problems didn't only affect Facebook's apps. The company said it also impacted many of its internal tools and communication systems. There were reports of employees unable to get into Facebook's offices because their passcards weren't working. Several told The Verge that they had to resort to using their Outlook email accounts to communicate with colleagues. Those who tried to log into work tools such as Google Docs using their email addresses also found they were locked out. The problems meant diagnosing and fixing the problem took even longer.

Congratulations, you made it to the next round pic.twitter.com/hviCZfG8q9

— drey (@Dreymwangi) October 4, 2021

Facebook has now apologized for the outage and explained what went wrong. It says a configuration change to the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between the company's data centers was to blame. Cloudflare senior vice president Dane Knecht tweeted that Facebook's border gateway protocol (BGP) routes, which find the best path to deliver traffic, were suddenly "withdrawn from the internet."

. @Facebook DNS and other services are down. It appears their BGP routes have been withdrawn from the internet. @Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 started seeing high failure in last 20mins.

— Dane Knecht (@dok2001) October 4, 2021

Security reporter Brian Krebs described it as "a routine BGP update gone wrong."

"By not having BGP announcements for your DNS name servers, DNS falls apart = nobody can find you on the internet. Same with WhatsApp btw. Facebook have basically deplatformed themselves from their own platform," tweeted Kevin Beaumont, Microsoft's former Head of Security Operations Centre.

Facebook has apologized for the outage and said there is no evidence user data was impacted.

The outage couldn't have come at a worse time for Facebook. It is currently dealing with the fallout from a Wall Street Journal report that revealed the company knows how damaging Instagram is to the mental health of teenage girls. There's also the whistleblower set to testify to US senators that Facebook prioritizes making money over doing what is good for the public.

According to Bloomberg, the (latest) bad publicity and outage led to a Facebook stock selloff that dropped its price 4.9% on Monday, wiping more than $6 billion off Mark Zuckerberg's personal wealth and sending him below fourth-place Bill Gates on the Billionaires Index.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/91574-facebook-back-online-after-more-than-6-hours.html

 

[Geralt]

That money Mark carries in his pocket every day.

 

[psycros]

Yes, I'm sure that nothing unusual was happening on Facebook's servers while this traffic routing error was occurring. Certainly not any mass editing or deleting of incriminating data.

 

[wiyosaya]

Poor Zucky. I feel sorry for him.

I wonder what the addicts did when their fix went offline.

 

[BSim500]

The problems started on Monday just before noon ET when people began reporting that they couldn't access Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or WhatsApp

In other breaking news, psychologists are investigating why the average global IQ rose +20 points for a 6hr period yesterday before falling again later in the evening...

 

[hahahanoobs]

The best part of watching Facebook in front of Congress was when Congress made a statement that Facebook said was wrong and they should do their research when it was Facebook that admitted it had the data, but stated Congress couldn't see it because of privacy reasons.

 

[Geralt]

In other breaking news, psychologists are investigating why the average global IQ rose +20 points for a 6hr period yesterday before falling again later in the evening...

They had to use their brains finally to move to Telegram!

 

[Uncle Al]

Dang .... and I was hoping it might be a few months to give everyone a rest from more FakeBook BS.

 

[Bl00dyMinded]

All this happens a day after a whistleblower destroys facebook on their scam. Mhmmm. I'm so glad I deleted FB, IG and removed Whatsapp and went with Signal. That company has become a toxic one which only cares about selling someone's private information for ads and clickbait.

 

[Avro Arrow]

So, if Suckerberg loses ~$6,000,000,000 for ~6 hours of FB being down that means he loses a billion for every hour that it's down. Does that mean he'd go bankrupt if it went down for a week?

"Facebook prioritizes making money over doing what is good for the public."
Well duh. This is why I've never liked capitalism. Tell me one corporation that does otherwse.

 

[p51d007]

Yes, I'm sure that nothing unusual was happening on Facebook's servers while this traffic routing error was occurring. Certainly not any mass editing or deleting of incriminating data.

THAT is what I thought too. While off line, he dumped all the evidence of the change in how they did things, and gee, just like Hillary, they "wiped" the drive clean.

 

[Geralt]

So, if Suckerberg loses ~$6,000,000,000 for ~6 hours of FB being down that means he loses a billion for every hour that it's down. Does that mean he'd go bankrupt if it went down for a week?

"Facebook prioritizes making money over doing what is good for the public."
Well duh. This is why I've never liked capitalism. Tell me one corporation that does otherwse.

OMG, I am fully capitalist

 

[Avro Arrow]

OMG, I am fully capitalist

The hell you are! Only psychopaths can be fully capitalist because they don't care what negative effects their actions have on others as long as they get some benefit. That's why I consider corporations to be psychopathic.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Perhaps someone on the inside got tired of tech giants taking it into their hands of picking and choosing what goes out on their platforms, that they struck back and took them down! HAHAHAHA!

On a side note, my kids don't have access to any of this crap on their devices, but this past Sunday the internet was down in my area for 3-4 hours and my kids were freaking the F out because they couldn't access youtube or stream something off netflix or play roblox with their friends.

I wonder how all those folks out there that live off this crap from Facebook managed to survive with things being down for 6+ hours.

 

[Geralt]

The hell you are! Only psychopaths can be fully capitalist because they don't care what negative effects their actions have on others as long as they get some benefit. That's why I consider corporations to be psychopathic.

I am a psycho

 

[envirovore]

I found it amusing that those still supporting Oculus couldn't even use the hardware they paid for during this.

 

[wiyosaya]

All this happens a day after a whistleblower destroys facebook on their scam. Mhmmm. I'm so glad I deleted FB, IG and removed Whatsapp and went with Signal. That company has become a toxic one which only cares about selling someone's private information for ads and clickbait.

I am so glad I never signed up, and never will.

I found it amusing that those still supporting Oculus couldn't even use the hardware they paid for during this.

Hmmm. Interesting. That seems totally outrageous, but completely believable.

I almost decided to move to the dark side in that I considered interviewing for Oculus. Hearing this, though, makes me glad I did not.

 

[wiyosaya]

THAT is what I thought too. While off line, he dumped all the evidence of the change in how they did things, and gee, just like Hillary, they "wiped" the drive clean.

Hillary, still? News flash. She lost in 2016.

 

[Markoni35]

Worst businessman ever. In just 6 hours he lost over $6 billions. What a loser. In my whole career I've never lost even a single billion, let alone six.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I am a psycho

Nah, if you were, I'd probably hate your guts.