October 5, 2021
The Facebook empire shut down on October 4- Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram all came to a crashing halt on Monday. A day that will go down in infamy for the panic it created in the world.
What was surprising about the shutdown was that it took more than five hours to come back online- that’s a full day for many.
The UK Guardian reported that Facebook issued a statement confirming that the cause of the outage was a configuration change to the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between the company’s data centres, which had a cascading effect, bringing all Facebook services to a halt.
What was also eerily conspicuous was that today is the same day where a Facebook whistle-blower decided to go to the US Senate to testify against the social media giant, essentially saying that Facebook’s founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, knew about the social discord Facebook was creating and in all instances intentionally profited from the chaos and misinformation being spread on the platform.
All of which is true and we all could appreciate American corporate greed always prioritises money over the wellbeing of the human and environment. That’s the name of capitalism.
I too had my own personal struggle with Facebook, had a personal profile and got into heaps of trouble with trolling on both sides, then I deleted the account altogether to get hold of my sanity and grip reality a little tighter. I have to say I’m a bit better off mentally as a result of it, but still have an account for business purposes because, let’s face it, it’s where everyone is and where you can make the largest impact for little or next to nothing. $5 on a Facebook advertisement is worth $1,000 for a print advertisement in your local daily.
So, while the panic set in, I understand why it was so. Because it was not just the Facebook platform itself, but Whatsapp- which many people use to make cheap phone calls. We use it every day. Without it my cellular phone bill would be beyond the roof and no way I could pay for it and run an international business like Caribbean Magazine Plus.
So, I’m glad Facebook products are back up, but also have to say I remain guarded as to what I put out on it. Certainly nothing too personal that I can be tracked down by anyone. So, I suggest if you are addicted, delete your page for a while, come back and reset your mind after you have detoxed and use the platform for something useful.
So along with COVID-19 you can say you survived the great social media blackout of 2021.