What Happened to Facebook, Instagram, & WhatsApp?:
Facebook and its sister properties Instagram and WhatsApp are suffering from ongoing, global outages. We don't yet know why this happened, but the how is clear: Earlier this morning, something inside Facebook caused the company to revoke key digital records that tell computers and other Internet-enabled devices how to find these destinations online.
Doug Madory is director of internet analysis at Kentik, a San Francisco-based network monitoring company. Madory said at approximately 11:39 a.m. ET today (15:39 UTC), someone at Facebook caused an update to be made to the company's Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) records. BGP is a mechanism by which Internet service providers of the world share information about which providers are responsible for routing Internet traffic to which specific groups of Internet addresses.
In simpler terms, sometime this morning Facebook took away the map telling the world's computers how to find its various online properties. As a result, when one types Facebook.com into a web browser, the browser has no idea where to find Facebook.com, and so returns an error page.
In addition to stranding billions of users, the Facebook outage also has stranded its employees from communicating with one another using their internal Facebook tools. That's because Facebook's email and tools are all managed in house and via the same domains that are now stranded.
[...] This is a developing story and will likely be updated throughout the day.
Also at: C|Net and Ars Technica.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 04 2021, @07:51PM (12 children)
Just imagine all the work that got done today when workers couldn't waste time on Facebook and its partner "time-wasters"..
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday October 04 2021, @08:14PM (3 children)
Even their IP address wouldn't get you to the site, I tried it this afternoon. Saw it this morning on The Verge, it was the top item on Google News.
We are all S/Ners here
(Score: 2) by Revek on Monday October 04 2021, @08:39PM (2 children)
You would think they would have backups of their BGP tables but hey I'm sure no one there is solely responsible for doing that ;)
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday October 04 2021, @10:40PM (1 child)
whatever it was, FB was back up at 9am in Sydney - even made the paper..
https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/facebook-whatsapp-instagram-suffer-worldwide-outage-20211005-p58x7g.html [smh.com.au]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 04 2021, @11:21PM
https://blog.cloudflare.com/october-2021-facebook-outage/ [cloudflare.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by iWantToKeepAnon on Monday October 04 2021, @08:17PM (7 children)
Imagine there's no SOCIAL-MEDIA
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no TWITTER, too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace... You...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
(Score: 2, Troll) by Gaaark on Monday October 04 2021, @10:29PM (1 child)
Imagine there's no Yoko Ono
It isn't hard to do
No lousy screeching
And no pretentious 'artistic' asshole non-sensery
Oh f*ck it, just enjoy!
https://youtu.be/03K4J_nstcI [youtu.be]
https://youtu.be/76LjyxX-GHI [youtu.be]
http://blog.livedoor.jp/beatlesjapan-blog/archives/83211354.html [livedoor.jp]
Mark David Chapman took out the wrong person.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 04 2021, @10:46PM
Imagine there's no Gaaark
It's easy if you try
Plenty of dark matter
But no autistic cries
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 05 2021, @03:17AM (1 child)
Well, I'm still posting to Usenet...
(Score: 2) by ewk on Tuesday October 05 2021, @12:57PM
"Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!"
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 5, Funny) by driverless on Tuesday October 05 2021, @06:37AM (2 children)
First they came for the neo-nazis, but I didn't say anything because I wasn't a neo-nazi.
Then they came for the white supremacists, but I didn't say anything because I wasn't a white supremacist.
Then they came for the antivaxxers, but I didn't say anything because I wasn't an antivaxxer.
Then they came for the homophobes and Islamophobes and ..., but I didn't say anything because I wasn't a homophobe or Islamophobe or ....
Then they came for the Russian trolls, but I didn't say anything because I wasn't a Russian troll.
Then they came for the conspiracy theorists, but I didn't say anything because I wasn't a conspiracy theorist.
Then I looked around Facebook, and there was no-one left.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 05 2021, @07:28AM
To be modded up, as Funny, or Interesting, or Touche, by those who have not yet been banned from moderation for being opposed to one of the named parties. I would say, "See you on Facebook!", but, you know, not. Throw a coin to the Witcher.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 05 2021, @11:10AM
But, well, you hadn't been saying anything all along, so no skin off your teeth, right?