Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, had a global outage leaving millions of its users without their go-to-source for news, current events and gossip on Monday, 4th October. Most importantly, small business owners who depend on these platforms for sales and growth of their customer base also faced a setback for the hours the outage lasted.
Facebook has apologised for the impact the outage had on small businesses in a statement released on their official page.
“We wanted to acknowledge the impact the outage has had on everyone who depends on accessing our apps and services every day.
To the small businesses discovering new customers, groups bringing people together around shared interests, creators engaging with their communities, and families trying to connect: we’re sorry.
We’ve been working hard to restore access and are happy to report our apps and services are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us and continuing to be the best part of Facebook.”
Services for all the social mediums got restored by 6 p.m. (EST) but an estimated $6 billion in revenue was lost for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The social platform announced that no user data was compromised, and that the outage was caused from a “configuration change.”
This outage comes after Facebook whistle-blower, Frances Haugen, a 37-year-old data scientist from Iowa, came out publicly in an interview with the CBS news show “60 Minutes” after she leaked a trove of documents to authorities alleging the social media giant knew its products were fueling hate and harming children’s mental health. She also stated that Facebook was “substantially worse” than anything she had seen before.
