It was a crazy day on social media Monday, just not on Facebook and its sister services Instagram and WhatsApp. The week kicked off with a massive outage at the social media company. Jokes flew wild…on Twitter. But by the end of the day, all three services started slowly roaring back to life.
To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we're sorry. We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us.
— Meta (@Meta) October 4, 2021
It all began around 11:30 EST, the morning after 60 Minutes aired a shocking — though not that shocking — report from a whistleblower about how higher-ups allegedly allowed various strains of misinformation to spread because it was good for traffic. As the company was being accused of favoring profits over public safety, they suddenly went AWOL. Around 6:30 EST, some seven hours later, the company announced — on Twitter — that things would soon be back to normal.
“To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we’re sorry,” Facebook said. “We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us.”
It remains a mystery what happened, beyond some vague chatter about “networking issues.” All three services spent the day reassuring people — again, on Twitter — that they were on it.
Though the outage caused a lot of jokes, some pointed out the parts of it that are no laughing matter. Some suggested that Facebook Inc. should run afoul of antitrust laws.
If Facebook’s monopolistic behavior was checked back when it should’ve been (perhaps around the time it started acquiring competitors like Instagram), the continents of people who depend on WhatsApp & IG for either communication or commerce would be fine right now. Break them up.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 4, 2021
But there were also jokes.
Folks from Instagram and Facebook browsing Twitter until they can go back to seeing memes 3 weeks late https://t.co/2vehMKHqIO
— Jasmine (@JasmineLWatkins) October 4, 2021
Ok Facebook and Instagram is back. y’all can leave now https://t.co/82lKrNVugV
— DWAYNE (@DwayneOfficial) October 4, 2021
https://twitter.com/ChammoutHassan/status/1445164110300291074
Facebook is coming back, but you shouldn't.
— God (@TheTweetOfGod) October 4, 2021
And there were also people who wished Facebook Inc. hadn’t come back.
If Facebook and Instagram never came back, depression rates would drastically drop in a heartbeat.
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) October 4, 2021
Society if Facebook never came back online pic.twitter.com/6LMRunmzDy
— Ramp Capital (@RampCapitalLLC) October 4, 2021
https://twitter.com/AndrewCorns/status/1445150891653406724
What if WhatsApp Facebook and Instagram never came back? 😬🙆🏾♂️🥺
Me on Twitter: pic.twitter.com/8qW8atB9Gv
— Ralford Rollings-Bull (@PrinceRalfordo) October 4, 2021
What would we actually lose if Facebook never came back on?
— Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) October 4, 2021
imagine how incredibly beautiful it would be if facebook, instagram and whatsapp just…. never came back online
— ཊལབསརངཧ (@David_Rudnick) October 4, 2021
But Facebook et al. are back, so at least your uncle who falls for misinformation about horse drugs is happy again.