Facebook Goes Down — Just Hours After Former Engineer Blows Whistle on Company
GoLocalProv Business Team
Facebook Goes Down — Just Hours After Former Engineer Blows Whistle on Company
In addition to Facebook, the company’s other major platforms -- Instagram and WhatsApp -- have also had major failures.
Facebook’s stock was down nearly 5% in trading on Monday.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST“We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products,” Facebook wrote in a message posted on Twitter. “We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Facebook wasn’t immediately available to comment on the reason for the outage. The problems appeared to be linked to a change the company made to networking instructions for how the world accesses its systems, according to outside experts.
Users began to receive error messages when trying to access Facebook platforms shortly before 12 p.m. ET, and the outage was ‘widespread and global in scale,’ according to a spokesperson for the parent company of Downdetector, a site that monitors website outages.”
In just the past two weeks, Facebook has faced an onslaught of criticism including a mammoth special investigation by the WSJ, Congressional hearings, and blockbuster accusations by a former company engineer who appeared on 60 Minutes on Sunday -- and claimed that the company has chosen profits over the truth.
Frances Haugen, a former product manager hired to help protect against election interference on Facebook, said she had grown frustrated by what she saw as the company’s lack of openness about its platforms’ potential for harm and unwillingness to address its flaws. She is scheduled to testify before Congress on Tuesday. She has also sought federal whistleblower protection with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“If people just hate Facebook more because of what I’ve done, then I’ve failed,” she said. “I believe in truth and reconciliation—we need to admit reality. The first step of that is documentation.”