Facebook completely shut down yesterday. And the world imploded.
Well, not literally, but figuratively. On Wednesday March 13th, 2019, Facebook was nearly completely offline around the world. Starting at around 11 am, users noticed they were having issues posting statuses and uploading pictures. That quickly morphed into having trouble liking, commenting or sharing on other FB user posts and eventually led to login issues. The difficulties started small with a mild grumbling from the peanut gallery and led to an epic outage around the world that had social media junkies roaring with all of their might.
How Long Was Facebook Out For?
Estimates vary based on country and region but the outage lasted at least 20 hours. The rest of the Facebook family – WhatsApp, Instagram, Oculus – were affected as well and suffered slow feed loading, strained or no posting capabilities and, eventually, were completely useless like their mother company.
Facebook sent out emails and, ironically, posted updates via their rival, Twitter. What is interesting is that the outage didn’t affect everyone the same way. Some countries had issues with WhatsApp while the Unites States wasn’t affected. In the same office, right next to each other, one user could login to FB and send a message while the other person couldn’t get past the sign in screen.
Facebook and Instagram appeared to be completely restored by 9 pm Central time.
What Caused The Facebook Outage?
Facebook tried to alleviate the panic at intervals throughout the day by saying it was fixing issues and “down for maintenance” but eventually had to shut down the server and put the social media platform on deep freeze. Facebook was stumped by the outage but assured everyone it wasn’t due to DDoS attacks of any nature. DDoS, or distributed denial-of-service, is where hackers try and crash a site by flooding it with too much traffic.
The social media giant still hasn’t revealed what it believes to be the true cause of the outage and, as of this writing, is still fully investigating to make sure there was no criminal actions or nefarious intentions at work.
Repercussions Of The Facebook Outage
While the platform of applications are working fine this morning, a sour taste is still left in the mouths of social media users. Many are outraged that in such an age of technology and 24/7 access and immediacy a behemoth could drop the ball as badly as they did. Twitter was aflame with #facebookdown and #instagramdown hashtags and the flood of memes mocking the outage saturated Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube and other platforms. There was even an outcry of DELETE FACEBOOK coming from the disgruntled users who were let down by what they have grown complacent in believing is a constant.
The positive of all of the chaos yesterday is that it brings forth both important and fascinating points. The fascinating aspect is watching a world literally crumble because they couldn’t access a social media platform for one day. Most of our society has become completely dependent on having that 24/7 access. We have grown accustomed to having things our way when we want it and how we want it that we are losing the ability to be flexible and traverse common obstacles without the use of online activities. The art of communication is dying because individuals spend more time texting and commenting online than interacting with other humans and learning social cues, behavior and adaptability.
With those points in mind, it is important to remember that we do not NEED social media. Everything created online was intended to make our lives EASIER. It was a want to make daily chores or the ability to send vital information quicker a way of increasing the quality of our lives. However, the mindset has become that we need these applications in order to survive. That is completely false. Banking apps, email, social media, accounting software – all intended to simply make things a bit quicker and easier for us to manage.
Another important point brought to light yesterday was that there are many people who gauge their self-worth based on how many likes their posts get or how many friends they have on social platforms. Self-worth comes from within. You do not need validation from others about how special you are. If you seek validation from outside sources, you will never truly achieve it and always be chasing it, craving it. Take a moment, breathe and realize that most important person you have to get right with is yourself.
What Does This Mean Going Forward?
What we should consider going forward is that technology is just as vulnerable as we are and that we shouldn’t completely rely on it in order to live. Use it to your heart’s content to fulfill whatever goals you establish for yourself but remember to put the phone down from time-to-time and look around you. The world is a fascinating and mysterious place waiting to be explored and that there are people sitting on the same train, in the same restaurant or standing at the same corner as you that could potentially be a great friend, business contact or your future soulmate.
Enjoy life, your friends and family, new opportunities and the ability to experience it all. And pray that Mark Zuckerberg’s massive migraine goes away.
If social media goes down again or for some reason you can access our Burr Ridge Dumpster Rental site, you can always call us on the phone at 630.716.1030 . Doesn’t matter if it’s cell or rotary, give us a ring.
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