On Monday, October 4th, a global outage paralyzed the use of part of social media networks, causing panic among influencers and addicts.
“An unexpected error occurred.” Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Messenger were out of service on the evening of October 4th.
For more than six hours, users could not access their social networks. Smartphones, tablets, or computers—no platform was spared. To recall, these media are used by 3.5 billion people daily.
In this context, the American company owning these platforms explained that the outage was due to a faulty server configuration change.
Co-founder Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook apologized for the inconvenience. “Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger are back online now. Sorry for today’s disruption. I know how much you rely on our services to stay connected with the people you care about.”
The cost is steep! In total, this technical issue resulted in a $7.4 billion loss for the California giant. The stock price also dropped by 5%.
However, Mark Zuckerberg is facing harsh criticism. Indeed, in recent times, Instagram failures have increased.
Additionally, whistleblower Frances Haugen, an engineer who worked for the company, points out the American firm’s enrichment at the expense of user data security.
Rivals have taken advantage of the situation. The Telegram app saw its registration numbers skyrocket, moving from the fifth to the 56th place among the most downloaded free apps.
Whether the impact is professional or personal, this technical inconvenience reveals the dependence on social media.
