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Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram suffered an outage that barred users around the world from accessing social media platforms for nearly six hours on Monday and Tuesday.
The outage was one of the worst Facebook has seen, with the company blaming faulty configuration changes to its routers as the cause of the protracted disruption.
Three people share how the blackout affected them – with social media users describing it as a few hours of both positive and negative.
“I panicked at the idea of getting in touch with my family abroad”
“I noticed that my main channels of communication with my family who live in Turkey had disappeared. Even during the lockdown, I didn’t have such a moment of panic, worrying about living in different countries and not being able to keep in touch. I use WhatsApp groups to stay in touch with my immediate and extended family – we send messages daily. Whenever there is a health issue or an emergency, the news always falls on WhatsApp immediately – it’s a lifeline.
“When I noticed the outage, I emailed my sister and mom asking them to download Discord as a new chat platform. My 66-year-old mom was able to set up a Discord channel – so the outage increased our technical capability and she is becoming more tech savvy – she immediately sent me a WhatsApp message when the outage was over.
“At first it was scary how much we rely on these apps, and then it allowed us to find an alternative immediately. I was happy to stay away from the Facebook ecosystem, but my mom told me “I tried it, now let’s just carry on with the old ways” when the platforms were working. I look forward to the day when we take Facebook completely out of our lives. I followed its impact on the American elections, the ethical issues of its advertisements and its fake news.
Burcu Avci, 36, designer, living in Belgium
‘We have to find a backup to the social media platform ‘
“I was working on a group assignment that evening with a few of my classmates via WhatsApp, coordinating what our roles would be for the presentation and how to divide each part equally. Then suddenly I realized my messages weren’t being sent. We only use WhatsApp for communication – I don’t have any of their emails. I felt a little stressed and started to panic thinking “Oh my God, we have to give it back tomorrow”. But then I decided to go to bed, thinking we could work on it tomorrow morning.
“The next morning we managed to continue our work. The blackout delayed our work for a few hours, but we managed to finish it before the deadline. If WhatsApp hadn’t come back online it would have been a little hopeless – I don’t know what we would have done. We need to find another social media platform to communicate in case something like this happens again. ”
Bariq Ilham, 21, university student, Indonesia
‘It was peaceful and liberating ‘
“I was supposed to have a WhatsApp conversation with a few friends on Monday night, and we understood between us that it was down. I was happy in a way, because my son is here from India, and he’s not here often. No one was on the phone and we did a good part of Cluedo. We found it quite peaceful and truly liberating.
“It’s quite strange, we kinda forget how intrusive these things are. My son’s wife lives in India, so he’s on the phone on WhatsApp with her all the time – it would be difficult for him without that sort of thing. And if he’s there, that’s what we use to communicate with him.
“I use Facebook several times a week, including Marketplace. I don’t use it as much as I used to – you used to get more messages from friends if they were out and about doing this or that. With Covid, when you’re not allowed to do anything, or if you’re doing something you’re not supposed to do, people have stopped posting. I’m not sure they’ve resumed the habit.
Carole Judd, 58, of Dorset, UK
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