Minimal Facebook outage raises questions about whistleblower reports – Expert

A multi-hour outage that affected Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp will have minimal impact, however, the timing of the incident raises questions as it coincides with whistleblower reports that have revealed the company is engaging in practices. unethical, University of Florida social media professor Andrew Selepak told Sputnik.

Over the past few weeks, Frances Haugen, a former product manager at Facebook who left the company in May, has revealed thousands of corporate investigation pages showing Facebook withheld evidence that its platforms were disseminating information. damaging and had lied about it.

“I don’t think he [the outages] will necessarily have a long-term impact, but I think people have to question the exact timing of that because of the story that just came out, ”Selepak said on Monday. “The timing seems to be a bit awkward for Facebook right now and we’ll have to wait and see exactly what was the cause.”

The outage, which began around 11:30 a.m. EST (3:30 p.m. GMT), impacted Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp users around the world. Users of some other messengers, including Telegram, have also been affected. The outage was reportedly caused by an update to the Boundary Gateway Protocol (BGP).

On Monday evening, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger were coming back online.

Selepak predicts that Facebook will determine that the issue was caused by an issue with a Domain Name System server and that it will be resolved. Selepak added that the whistleblower’s revelations were also not surprising.

“If there is a malicious side to it, it probably has a better chance of coming from people working within the company,” Selepak said. “If Facebook is now seen as that platform that stirs up negative emotions, provokes political partisanship, there could be an individual or a small handful of individuals who have decided to take it upon themselves to limit the negative impact that Facebook can. have it, but right now it’s probably a little too early to know exactly what caused it.

Earlier today, the Pentagon and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) told Sputnik they had no comment regarding the outage that affected Facebook services and referred all requests to the company since ‘it is a private asset.

Selepak also said the U.S. government may not be as concerned about the Facebook outage compared to the Colonial Pipeline outage in May, which caused a major national security concern.

“I think from a government perspective, unless there is a hack by an outside entity, a bad outside government, the impact of Facebook and Instagram for a few hours really has a pretty limited impact on daily work. of the average person, ”Selepak said. “Without the whistleblower story just coming out, I don’t think it’s as big a story as it would be.”

The Facebook whistleblower joined the social media giant in 2019 to tackle disinformation, but he has been increasingly frustrated with the way the company is tackling the problem. The whistleblower said she believed Facebook’s connivance to spread disinformation was among the factors that led to the January 6 riot in Washington following the U.S. presidential election. Facebook has denied the allegations.