Facebook’s share slump wiped more than $US6 billion off Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth.Credit:Getty
Jake Williams,chief technical officer of the cybersecurity firm BreachQuest,said that while foul play cannot be completely ruled out,chances were good that the outage is “an operational issue” caused by human error.
Madory said there was no sign that anyone but Facebook was responsible and discounted the possibility that another major internet player,such as a telecom company,might have inadvertently rewritten major routing tables that affect Facebook. “No one else announced these routes,” said Madory.
Whistleblower comes forward
Facebook is goingthrough a separate major crisis after whistleblower Frances Haugen,a former Facebook product manager,providedThe Wall Street Journal with internal documents that exposed the company’s awareness of harms caused by some of its products and decisions. Haugen went public on60 Minutes in the US on Sunday,local time,and is scheduled to testify before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday.
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen appears on 60 Minutes in the US.Credit:CBS via AP
Haugen had also anonymously filed complaints with federal law enforcement alleging that Facebook’s own research shows how it magnifies hate and misinformation,leads to increased polarisation and that Instagram,specifically,can harm teenage girls’ mental health.
TheJournal’s stories,called “The Facebook Files,” painted a picture of a company focused on growth and its own interests over the public good. Facebook has tried to play down the research. Nick Clegg,the company’s vice-president of policy and public affairs,wrote to Facebook employees in a memo on Friday that “social media has had a big impact on society in recent years,and Facebook is often a place where much of this debate plays out”.
Twitter,meanwhile,chimed in from the company’s main Twitter account,posting “hello literally everyone” as jokes and memes about the Facebook outage flooded the platform.
Later,as an unverified screenshot suggesting that the facebook.com address was for sale circulated,Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted,“how much?”
AP,with Bloomberg
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