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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: 3, Touché) by SomeGuy on Monday October 04 2021, @10:06PM (1 child)
(posted this last time, but it is still funny)
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 "Sorry, something went wrong.".
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" 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 appeared in the doorway. It glanced at him annoyedly. For a moment he extends his arm to take a picture with his cell phone. But he drops his 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 Tuesday October 05 2021, @12:30AM
There is no joy in Farmville for the Mighty Zuck has struck out,