Facebook fights global outage and whistleblower revelations

Facebook battled dueling crises connected Monday arsenic it tried to hole a large-scale outage of its ascendant societal web and fought against a whistleblower's damning revelations.

Many long-held fears and criticisms astir the level look to person been backed up by Facebook's ain research, which ex-worker Frances Haugen has turned implicit to authorities and the Wall Street Journal.

But arsenic US senators prepared for her highly-anticipated Tuesday grounds connected the documents, Facebook was struggling to extremity an hours' agelong outage that perchance deed tens of millions of users crossed its platforms, including Instagram and WhatsApp.

"Sincere apologies to everyone impacted by outages of Facebook powered services close now," Mike Schroepfer, the company's chief exertion officer tweeted.

"We are experiencing networking issues and teams are moving arsenic accelerated arsenic imaginable to debug and reconstruct arsenic accelerated arsenic possible," helium said, echoing akin statements by Instagram and WhatsApp.

Tracker Downdetector said it had received 10.6 cardinal reports of problems ranging from the United States and Europe to Colombia and Singapore, with occupation archetypal popping up astir 1545 GMT.

Users trying to entree Facebook successful affected areas were greeted with the message: "Something went wrong. We're moving connected it and we'll get it fixed arsenic soon arsenic we can."

Facebook has not communicated connected the imaginable origin of the outage, but cyber information experts noted they had recovered signs that online routes that pb radical to the societal elephantine were disrupted.

"Facebook and related properties disappeared from the Internet successful a flurry of BGP updates," tweeted John Graham-Cumming, the main exertion serviceman astatine web institution Cloudflare.

'Make assemblage dissatisfaction worse'

Facebook has pushed backmost hard against the outrage regarding its practices and impact, but this is conscionable the latest situation to deed the business.

US lawmakers for years person threatened to modulate Facebook and different societal media giants to code criticisms that the platforms trample connected privacy, supply a megaphone for unsafe misinformation and harm young people's well-being.

After years of crises directed astatine societal media, without large legislative overhauls, immoderate experts were skeptical that alteration was coming.

"This is simply a concern wherever there's going to beryllium a batch of smoke, and a batch of fury, but not a batch of action," said Mark Hass, an Arizona State University professor

"It's going to person to travel down to the platforms, feeling unit from their users feeling unit from their employees," helium added, noting authorities won't efficaciously beryllium capable to modulate content.

Haugen, a 37-year-old information idiosyncratic from Iowa, has worked for companies including Google and Pinterest—but said successful an interrogation with CBS quality amusement "60 Minutes" that Facebook was "substantially worse" than thing she had seen before.

Facebook's vice president of argumentation and planetary affairs Nick Clegg vehemently pushed backmost astatine the assertion its platforms are "toxic" for teens, days aft a tense, hours-long legislature proceeding successful which US lawmakers grilled the institution implicit its interaction connected the intelligence wellness of young users.

Senators enactment the social media giant's Antigone Davis done the wringer past week implicit damning reports that Facebook's ain probe warned of imaginable harm.

Davis told lawmakers that a survey of teens connected 12 superior issues similar anxiety, sadness and eating disorders showed that Instagram was mostly adjuvant to them.

Yet, Senator Richard Blumenthal work aloud excerpts from institution documents helium said were leaked to lawmakers by a Facebook whistleblower that straight contradicted her.

"Substantial grounds suggests that experiences connected Instagram and Facebook marque assemblage dissatisfaction worse," helium said, adding the uncovering was not a disgruntled worker's ailment but institution research.

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© 2021 AFP