Facebook gives reason for 6hrs outage, loses $6 billion in the process
Facebook has given the reason for the over 6-hour outage on Monday. In a blog post Monday night, the widely used social media app explained that the six-hour outage that took it offline along with Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and OculusVR was the result of a configuration change to its routers. “This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centres communicate, bringing our services to a halt. Not of a hack or attempt to get at user data, said Facebook.
Meanwhile, the outage is estimated to have caused Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, a personal loss in revenue amounting to over $6 billion.
According to Bloomberg, a selloff sent the social-media giant’s stock plummeting around 5% on Monday, adding to a drop of about 15% since mid-September. The stock slide on Monday sent Zuckerberg’s worth down to $120.9 billion, dropping him below Bill Gates to No. 5 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He’s lost about $19 billion of wealth since September 13, when he was worth nearly $140 billion, according to the index.”
However, it will be difficult to ascertain the amount of loss the 6-hour outage has caused the global economy. This is because it will be difficult to put a figure to the loss suffered by billions of people and businesses disconnected all over the world.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted an apology on Monday evening, saying the platforms were coming back online. “Sorry for the disruption today — I know how much you rely on our services to stay connected with the people you care about.”
It is instructive, however, that Facebook’s outage came a day before whistle blower Frances Haugen was set to testify before Congress about her experiences at the company. Haugen, a former Facebook product manager who worked on its Civic Integrity group, provided a trove of internal Facebook documents to reporters at the Wall Street Journal. She told 60 Minutes on Sunday that Facebook “pays for its profits with our safety”.
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