It all began with a catastrophic IT breakdown, which resulted in the company’s services being taken offline for six hours. It proceeded with a whistleblower warning lawmakers about a toxic culture that prioritized profits over user interests.
We take a look back at what seemed to be Facebook’s worst week ever.
In the past 15 years, it was rather normal for new web platforms such as Facebook to go offline for a day or even longer. Nobody was that enraged since, back then, a much smaller number of users didn’t consider a social media site to be a necessary service.
Even if a platform goes out for an hour, there is a huge uproar, because billions of people now demand to be connected 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Six hours appears to be an impossibility.
Although some mocked the outrage over Facebook’s downtime, millions of small businesses rely on its services, and their owners aren’t laughing. I met with a Christmas tree vendor who relied on Facebook to reach out to clients and witnessed a 50% decline in traffic to her website during the outage.
I was transported back into the communications dark ages when a business development consultant told me she used WhatsApp to host live events.
And an artist told me that he used Instagram as his gallery but was worried about what would happen if people stopped using it, stating, “I often joke I only really live on Instagram.”
So, what was the cause of the shutdown, and why did it linger for so long?
“Configuration modifications on the backbone routers that co-ordinate network traffic between our data centers” caused the problem, according to Facebook. According to Kate Bevan, editor of Which Computing, this backbone is Facebook’s internal network, which connects all of the company’s facilities throughout the world.
“Facebook has effectively developed its own internet, and it now needs to communicate with the rest of the internet. There was also a configuration update, which knocked it offline. As a result, Facebook vanished from the internet, owing to its inability to inform the internet that it existed “she stated
To make matters worse, the engineers were unable to connect remotely since the internet stated there was nothing to connect to, and the increased layers of security around the buildings exacerbated the situation.
“People couldn’t get inside the building when they showed up at the California office to physically prod the servers.”
As the services were restored, attention turned to Washington and a former Facebook employee’s appearance before Congress. Frances Haugen, a source for a series of Wall Street Journal articles based on internal papers, told lawmakers that the firm always prioritized profits over consumer well-being.
“I’ve seen Facebook face conflicts between its own revenues and our safety on several occasions. Facebook has a history of resolving issues in favor of its own revenues “she stated
That criticism, along with the accusation that Facebook is ignoring its own studies suggesting that Instagram, which it owns, is having a negative impact on youngsters’ mental health, appears to have prompted a response from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
For weeks, the social media mogul’s all-powerful CEO has been under pressure to say something, anything, about the tidal wave of criticism that has engulfed his firm.
He wrote to employees that the coverage “doesn’t reflect the firm we know” in a lengthy note.
He scoffed at the notion that Facebook prioritized money over the well-being of its users.
Mr Zuckerberg stated, “The allegation that we actively push stuff that makes people upset for business is simply irrational.” “Advertisers routinely tell us they don’t want their advertisements next to dangerous or angry content,” says the company.
And he wondered why the corporation had spent so much money on research in the first place if it was going to ignore it.
The critics were skeptical, claiming that if Facebook was so sure in its findings, it should have made it public rather than keeping it under wraps.
The cover article of this week’s Time magazine is on how public perceptions of Facebook and its creator have shifted over the previous decade. A sad, sickly Mr Zuckerberg is depicted, his face obscured by a “delete Facebook?” box.
I went to Facebook’s California headquarters in late 2010 on the day when Time awarded Mark Zuckerberg Person of the Year. While Mr. Zuckerberg was unavailable for an interview for our radio series The Secret History of Social Networking, one of his most senior lieutenants, Chris Cox, provided us with this extremely vivid portrait of his boss.
“He gives off the impression that he’s from the future, where everything is good, and he’s returned a few months to tell you everything is fine.”
A few months later, Facebook was credited with igniting the Arab Spring – it was, after all, a cool corporation, a democratizing force that gave people power. Today is far from cool, and nothing appears to be in order.
Except, of course, when it comes to Facebook’s finances and the finances of its founder. It could be pummeled by scandals, shattered by technical failures, and subjected to more regulation. Despite a few hiccups, profits and the stock price continue to rise.
Politicians, regulators, and many users have lost faith in Facebook, but with advertising and investors still on board, Mr Zuckerberg could be forgiven for believing that everything will be fine.
