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posted by chromas on Thursday March 14 2019, @12:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the downtime-as-a-public-service dept.

Facebook appears to be down.

A link for this submission? Really? But it is down, as in not working. Error 5 - something went wrong.

[chromas adds] From VOA:

Instagram is back up after suffering a partial outage for more than several hours, the photo-sharing social network platform said in a tweet, but its parent Facebook Inc.'s app still seemed to be down for some users around the globe.

Certain users had trouble in accessing widely used Instagram, Whatsapp and Facebook apps earlier Wednesday, in one of the longest outages faced by the company in the recent past.

[...] A Facebook spokesman confirmed the partial outage, but did not provide an update. The social networking site had issues for more than 12 hours, according to its developer's page.

Facebook took to Twitter to inform users that it was working to resolve the issue as soon as possible and confirmed that the matter was not related to a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.


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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by opinionated_science on Thursday March 14 2019, @12:09PM (5 children)

    by opinionated_science (4031) on Thursday March 14 2019, @12:09PM (#814146)

    Or are we waiting for some, y'know, *technical* information on what happened...

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 14 2019, @12:15PM (3 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday March 14 2019, @12:15PM (#814150)

      Well... I doubt that any real truth will be coming to light on this issue. In the old days, Facebook code was reputed to be pretty awful, but with billions in investment I hope they've managed to hire a few people who know what they are doing by now.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:11PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:11PM (#814164) Journal

        If Facebook is to be investigated for any type of crime, the first one should be for using PHP.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 2) by driverless on Friday March 15 2019, @03:45AM (1 child)

        by driverless (4770) on Friday March 15 2019, @03:45AM (#814646)

        Yup, now they've got tens of millions of lines of code that's pretty awful instead of just thousands of lines of code that's pretty awful.

        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 15 2019, @04:02AM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday March 15 2019, @04:02AM (#814659)

          If the tens of millions of lines doesn't implode under its own weight, that's actually some kind of impressive.

          With just a few thousand lines of code, you can do some pretty awful things that still creak by as "useable."

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday March 14 2019, @09:23PM

      by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Thursday March 14 2019, @09:23PM (#814484)

      ssh root@facebook

      Enter Password: hunter2

      rm -rf /*

      They must have backups I suppose. You can have a go now.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by isostatic on Thursday March 14 2019, @12:11PM (11 children)

    by isostatic (365) on Thursday March 14 2019, @12:11PM (#814148) Journal

    And nothing of value was lost

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 14 2019, @12:29PM (10 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday March 14 2019, @12:29PM (#814154)

      Check the market cap. Value is not intrinsic, value is what somebody with money is willing to pay.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by isostatic on Thursday March 14 2019, @12:54PM (3 children)

        by isostatic (365) on Thursday March 14 2019, @12:54PM (#814159) Journal

        Share price is higher than it's been since August 2018. There appears to have been no impact

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:15PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:15PM (#814166)

          You're obviously wrong: apparently they need to crash more so the price goes even higher.

        • (Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:40PM (1 child)

          by shrewdsheep (5215) on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:40PM (#814180)

          Everybody sighs in relief, well done Facebook, let's buy some shares for this bold and prudent step.

          • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 15 2019, @04:05AM

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday March 15 2019, @04:05AM (#814661)

            Predicting market moves is all about predicting most people's behavior...people who buy things in the market, at least.

            The dataset Facebook streams and collects is really valuable when it comes to predicting people's behavior.

            --
            🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @02:28PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @02:28PM (#814216)

        I see your name is JoeMerchant, so the confusion is understandable, but value is not money.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Thursday March 14 2019, @04:10PM (1 child)

          by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 14 2019, @04:10PM (#814275) Journal

          Wealth is not money, but I'm not sure about value. Value seems to denote that it has an assignable value...i.e., that you can put a number to it. Now Facebook may have a negative value to me, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have one.

          --
          Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
          • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @06:47PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @06:47PM (#814371)

            I agree that money is in the set of things that can be assigned a value, but not all things that can be assigned a value is money.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Thursday March 14 2019, @05:18PM (1 child)

        by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Thursday March 14 2019, @05:18PM (#814311) Homepage Journal

        No. COST is what people are willing to pay, VALUE is what it means to you.

        --
        mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 15 2019, @03:54AM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday March 15 2019, @03:54AM (#814653)

          I believe you will find that cost is equivalent to asking price, whereas value is equivalent to bidding price.

          If you ever find yourself in possession of something you consider extremely valuable and attempt to convert that value to something else, you will find that bidding price is the only one that really matters when you are selling. When you have cash and are attempting to use it to possess something, you are in a position to negotiate asking price downward - negotiating bidding price upward is a much harder game.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @05:20PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @05:20PM (#814315)

        Value *is* intrinsic. You're confusing value and price.

        Yesterday at the thrift store, they were giving away power supplies to clear the shelves. They have a value to somebody. To me they are valuable as an example in this post, but they had a price of zero yesterday.

        Facebook's "book value" per share is computable--it has physical assets, accounts receivable, contracts, etc. It's share price is what's determined by the market.

        tl;dr, share price and value are two different things.

  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Thexalon on Thursday March 14 2019, @12:16PM (12 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Thursday March 14 2019, @12:16PM (#814151)

    I'm speculating here, but I wouldn't be surprised if the real story looked something like: Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Spectrum, and/or another telecom went to Facebook last week and said "Nice website you have there, it would be a real shame if something happened to it. We can make sure nothing happens to it for $X. Of course, if you were to tell anybody about our little chat here, something might happen to it." That's been in their plans ever since they put Ajit Pai in as FCC chair, and there's no reason to think that they wouldn't carry it out.

    Either that or someone has a DDOS botnet that's much larger than anything we've seen before.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Thursday March 14 2019, @12:28PM (10 children)

      by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Thursday March 14 2019, @12:28PM (#814152) Homepage Journal

      I'm speculating too, but I'm going in the direction that some devops moron deployed broken code into production.

      Alternatively, there may have been some BGP [wikipedia.org] screwups/shenanigans that routed Facebook traffic off into oblivion.

      Given that Facebook has multiple datacenters, with dozens of peering agreements, it's unlikely that even a bunch of ISPs could take Facebook down like this. More's the pity.

      --
      No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
      • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday March 14 2019, @12:40PM

        by isostatic (365) on Thursday March 14 2019, @12:40PM (#814157) Journal

        BGP screwups/shenanigans get picked up and reported

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:30PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:30PM (#814173)

        I'm speculating too, but I'm going in the direction that some devops moron deployed broken code into production.

        So Facebook has no QA tests for code deployments? Or what are you suggesting?

        • (Score: 3, Touché) by NotSanguine on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:45PM

          by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:45PM (#814187) Homepage Journal

          I'm speculating

          Or is your reading comprehension that poor?

          --
          No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
        • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:50PM (1 child)

          by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:50PM (#814188) Homepage Journal

          And it's happened before. Perhaps not at Facebook, but at plenty of other places.

          Someone does something stupid and thinks they're in test when they're in production. It happens more often than you might think.

          And what part of "speculating" didn't you understand?

          Or haven't you had your coffee yet?

          --
          No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @03:40PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @03:40PM (#814258)

            Internal changes were the issue; blame inexperienced outsourced people following strict instructions that did not work. They in turn blamed employees because factually, they did what they were told to do and repeatedly pressing the button still didn't work. So they logged out and did something else and waited for someone to reply to emails about the issues they encountered. The next shift had no idea what was going on and also found that pressing the button still didn't work.

            I always wanted to be an IT guy in India. It seems so blameless and easy.

      • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @02:31PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @02:31PM (#814219)

        ..but I heard they have an AI check all the code.

      • (Score: 2) by captain normal on Thursday March 14 2019, @04:38PM (1 child)

        by captain normal (2205) on Thursday March 14 2019, @04:38PM (#814289)

        Maybe the Russians just switched on their "Great Firewall".
        https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/12/great-firewall-fears-as-russia-plans-to-cut-itself-off-from-internet [theguardian.com]

        --
        When life isn't going right, go left.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @06:59PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @06:59PM (#814376)

          I read an article yesterday of Alexander Borisov making an HTML parser [lexbor.com]. In it was this:

          HTML Specification

          Before we implement the parser, it is necessary to understand which HTML specification we should rely upon.

          There are two HTML specifications:

                  WHATWG [whatwg.org]
                          Apple, Mozilla, Google, Microsoft
                  W3C [w3.org]
                          A long list of companies

          Naturally, our choice fell on the industry leaders, namely, WHATWG. It's a living standard; these are large companies, each maintaining its own browser or a browser engine.

          UPDATE: Unfortunately, the links don't work if you are located in Russia. Apparently, it's the "echo" of the Telegram throttling attempts by the Man.

          Bold added by me.

      • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday March 14 2019, @05:20PM (1 child)

        by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Thursday March 14 2019, @05:20PM (#814316) Homepage Journal

        Or a broken router, bad cable... it could be anything.

        --
        mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
    • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:18PM

      by isostatic (365) on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:18PM (#814168) Journal

      A botnet of that capability, and network operator schenanegans of that level, would have been picked up by 3rd parties.

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:10PM (5 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:10PM (#814162) Journal

    It's up. Move along. Move along.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 3, Touché) by NotSanguine on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:50PM (4 children)

      by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:50PM (#814189) Homepage Journal

      More's the pity.

      --
      No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
      • (Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:59PM (3 children)

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:59PM (#814195) Journal

        At least we've got anti-vaccination propaganda flowing again.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 15 2019, @04:00AM (2 children)

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday March 15 2019, @04:00AM (#814656)

          Anti-vaxxers are grassroots. Perhaps unhinged, under-educated unequivocal nut jobs, but they're not really propagandists - they're (mostly) too disorganized for propaganda, they're more of the gossip, rumor and conspiracy theory set. Should you listen to them as a source of factual information? Hell no.

          Pro-vaxxers definitely qualify as propagandists, and as such I find it hard to believe 100% of what they push.

          If you want to be as rare as autism, try thinking for yourself instead of just listening to others.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
          • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday March 15 2019, @02:04PM (1 child)

            by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 15 2019, @02:04PM (#814756) Journal

            try thinking for yourself instead of just listening to others.

            If I think for myself, then I wouldn't listen to you telling me to think for myself. Therefore, I would not be thinking for myself but listening to others.

            OTOH, if I listen to others who tell me to think for myself, then I am not thinking for myself.

            Now stuck in infinite loop.

            --
            People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
            • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 15 2019, @02:35PM

              by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday March 15 2019, @02:35PM (#814773)

              If I think for myself, then I wouldn't listen to you telling me to think for myself. Therefore, I would not be thinking for myself but listening to others.

              I believe Schrödinger has your cat.

              --
              🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Nuke on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:11PM (1 child)

    by Nuke (3162) on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:11PM (#814163)

    Facebook took to Twitter to inform users ....

    That's soooooo funny, I love it. How the mighty have fallen!

    • (Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:12PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:12PM (#814165) Journal

      How the mighty have felon.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 2) by Alfred on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:38PM (7 children)

    by Alfred (4006) on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:38PM (#814179) Journal
    All those that actually use Facebook, what did they do during the outage? Talk to others like normal people? Or was this an experiment/conspiracy to get baseline intel on the dependence? And how neutralizing it would be to take down the medium during a military attack? I'm sure r/conspiracy has the truth!
    • (Score: 5, Funny) by SomeGuy on Thursday March 14 2019, @02:59PM (3 children)

      by SomeGuy (5632) on Thursday March 14 2019, @02:59PM (#814234)

      Huddled in a dark corner, he stared longingly and blankly at his cell phone. His cell phone blankly stared back at him. That is all he could see, an empty screen with nothing but the words "Error 5".

      He began rocking back and forth nervously, the cell phone illuminating his face with its ghostly blueish-white glow.

      It had been hours now. He had been unable tell complete strangers about what he had eaten earlier. He could not see whats-her-name's new cat pictures. The endless message feeds were now quiet. Sweat began to drip from his brow. What would he possibly do?

      In desperation, he had already tired downloading the "Fix Facebook Error 5" software from that helpful looking malware site. But his efforts were fruitless. Nothing worked.

      He gripped his cell phone tighter. "Is this... perhaps... the end of the world?" he thought to himself. For a moment, he envisioned himself driving a tank through an abandoned downtown. Out of habit, he reached to his phone to type out that thought for his network of "friends".... but the error message persisted.

      What could he possibly do? He wondered again. He glanced around, noting the glowing blue LEDs of his various electronic gadgets. But it all seemed so pointless now.

      A cat appears in the doorway. It glances at him annoyedly. For a moment he extends his arm to take a picture with his cell phone. But he drops is arm in despair. It won't work. The cat turns and darts away as he begins sobbing loudly.

      He gently caresses the screen of his precious phone. The phone hypnotically scrolls to another, mostly empty page. He caresses it again, scrolling back. "It can't be true. This can't be happening.", he sobs to himself, as he continues to scroll the hypnotic screen back and forth... back and forth... back and forth...

      Facebook is down.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @03:07PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @03:07PM (#814237)

        FB is down...but in his random scrolling back and forth he landed here on SN?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @07:01PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @07:01PM (#814380)

          Yea! We want part 2!

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @11:17PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @11:17PM (#814527)

          FB is down...but in his random scrolling back and forth he landed here on SN?

          $deity spare us from the scourge.

    • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday March 14 2019, @05:24PM (1 child)

      by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Thursday March 14 2019, @05:24PM (#814320) Homepage Journal

      I'm only on Facebook to promote my books and web sites, but people there were pretty freaked out this morning. One woman was boo-hooing about not being able to post a picture of her lunch.

      BTW, if you're in Antarctica and on Facebook, please send me a friend request. That is the final continent I have no friends in on.

      --
      mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday March 14 2019, @10:31PM

        by bzipitidoo (4388) on Thursday March 14 2019, @10:31PM (#814516) Journal

        Antarctica is the sort of place where people with no friends are sent. Good luck!

    • (Score: 2) by istartedi on Thursday March 14 2019, @05:29PM

      by istartedi (123) on Thursday March 14 2019, @05:29PM (#814325) Journal

      I don't use FaceBook, but I imagine it looked something like this [youtube.com]

      --
      Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:43PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:43PM (#814185)

    How many innocent lives were lost in this horrible horrible crash ...

    • (Score: 5, Touché) by DannyB on Thursday March 14 2019, @02:21PM (3 children)

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 14 2019, @02:21PM (#814211) Journal

      How many lives were saved by four hours of Facebook downtime?

      It's as if millions of Facebook users screamed out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @02:35PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @02:35PM (#814222)

        How many lives were saved by four hours of Facebook downtime?

        It's as if millions of Facebook users screamed out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

        That's no moon. It's Kim Kardashian's ass [nocookie.net] [SFW].

        Oh wait. That's Star Trek, right?

        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday March 14 2019, @03:37PM (1 child)

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 14 2019, @03:37PM (#814257) Journal

          As the Narn, the Minbari and Vorlon were turning to leave, Luke Skywalker raised his hand with his fingers parted in a V and said "Live Long and Prosper".

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @04:47PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @04:47PM (#814297)

            As Yoda mumbles to himself, "And begins it does."

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @07:14PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @07:14PM (#814386)

      None. They weren't innocent.

  • (Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:45PM (1 child)

    by SomeGuy (5632) on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:45PM (#814186)

    Suddenly millions of consumertards were unable to post pictures of their dicks.

    Just a little reminder folks, Facebook a single private web site. It is not the Internet, is it not part of the phone company, they are not a public service, and one day it will disappear forever.

    Today you have had a small taste of that. Do not rely on Facefook. Do not trust them. Use them if you absolutely must, but don't get too used to them.

    (Same goes for Twatter)

  • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday March 14 2019, @02:28PM

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Thursday March 14 2019, @02:28PM (#814214) Journal

    Oh, you mean it was not operational for awhile, not making a quality value judgment. Quality of content still remains the same, however.

    --
    This sig for rent.
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by stretch611 on Thursday March 14 2019, @05:19PM

    by stretch611 (6199) on Thursday March 14 2019, @05:19PM (#814313)

    Businesses across the country posted higher than expected profit in the 1st quarter. Interestingly, all businesses seem to point to a surge in employee productivity in the middle of March.

    --
    Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @05:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @05:41PM (#814336)

    We need to all post a wellness check on Fuckerberg's wall, after yesterday's tragic events.

  • (Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Friday March 15 2019, @02:06PM

    by Rivenaleem (3400) on Friday March 15 2019, @02:06PM (#814758)

    Not mentioned by anyone yet, but people were unable to use their Oculus Rift devices (even for SteamVR) because the server was down.

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