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FACEBOOK HAS BLAMED a “faulty configuration change” for the widespread outage which impacted the social media platform, along with Instagram and WhatsApp, for several hours yesterday,
The platforms had confirmed on Twitter they were aware of issues and working to resolve them after thousands of people reported outages shortly before 5pm on Monday.
Users were eventually able to access Facebook and Instagram from late on Monday evening, while WhatsApp said its services were “back and running at 100%” as of 3.30am this morning.
Facebook said a “faulty configuration change” on its routers was believed to be at the centre of the outage.
It said in a statement: “Our engineering teams have learned that configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centres caused issues that interrupted this communication.
“This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centres communicate, bringing our services to a halt.
“We want to make clear at this time we believe the root cause of this outage was a faulty configuration change. We also have no evidence that user data was compromised as a result of this downtime.”
The platform added it was working to understand more about the outage in order to “make our infrastructure more resilient”.
To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we're sorry. We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us.
— Facebook Engineering (@fb_engineering) October 4, 2021
In a statement posted to Twitter at 11.31pm on Monday, Facebook apologised for the outage and thanked its millions of users around the world “for bearing with us”.
It said: “To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we’re sorry.
“We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us.”
Data on the web service monitoring platform DownDetector showed that almost 50,000 people had reported the outages on Facebook by just after 5pm.
Most complaints cited issues with the website (72%), while others were linked to issues with the server connection and the app.
Moe than 75,000 had complained about WhatsApp, with 43% reporting issues with the app itself, while 28% cited the server connection and 28% relating to sending messages.
More than 30,000 Instagram users also had similar complaints, with 51% relating to the app, 26% over the server connection and 23% citing the website.
A graph on the DownDetector website showed a clear spike from after 4pm.
Facebook’s share price plummeted 4.9% amid the outage, which also came the day after a whistleblower claimed in a US interview that the company prioritises its own interests over the public good.
The platforms were affected by outages in 2019 – in an incident which saw #FacebookDown, #instagramdown and #whatsappdown trending worldwide on Twitter.
A few months prior, users of Facebook and Instagram reported being unable to open pages or sections on the apps.
The issue also affected other platforms such as Twitter amid an increase in traffic on its website and app.
Twitter Support tweeted: “Sometimes more people than usual use Twitter. We prepare for these moments, but today things didn’t go exactly as planned.
“Some of you may have had an issue seeing replies and DMs as a result. This has been fixed. Sorry about that!”
It had earlier joked: “Hello literally everyone.”
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Just get on with it, unionists will use any excuse to avoid the deputy first minister position.
British food safety standards recently signed of on allowing fish and vegetables from close to Fukushima nuclear plant into their food chain. This is the type of stuff that the protocol prevents from entering EU.
Highlights Britians race to standards bottom to promote profits.
There’s a lot less chance of Doug Beattie being needed than the Protocol.
It’s not like they’re a packet of crisps. Dougie trying to keep up with the DUP.
@Jason Healy: too late election over
Does he not realise that any “goods”, as he calls them, that the Ukrainian refugees are carrying are probably their last few possesions from their homeland, where as goods leaving the UK for the EU are goods being sold for profit as as such require to be checked for standards
UKRAINE REFUGEES are arriving here homeless and shell shocked …what is this guy talking about.. unbelievable
Yawn.
Exposing his true colours….Trying to keep one foot in the DUP camp.But at least he is in favour of power sharing.
Ignorance and racism all in one go!
I will be going from GB to Northern Ireland next month for a holiday and am taking my dog with me. Under the NI Protocol my dog will need to have an EU Animal Health Certificate, including an injection against rabies. The last case of rabies in either GB or the island of Ireland was in 1912. Could one of those people who support the Protocol explain to me why the EU insists on this anti-rabies injection in Northern Ireland? Or, to put it another way, is there any reason why the Protocol should not be renegotiated to get rid of obvious nonsense in it?
@Patrick Brompton: Why not email you question onto either Boris Johnston or sir Jeff. It was Boris’s Brexit deal that introduced the protocol supported by the DUP.
It would be the same rules if you went on holidays to France or any other EU country. Britain can’t except special treatment when it left europe. It’s the same for every country that’s not a member of europe.
@Patrick Brompton: — It seems logical to me that there have been no cases of rabies because of dog owners having to comply with necessary regulations, or “nonsense” as you seem to refer to them as.
@leartius: Both Boris and Sir Jeff believe that the NI Protocol should be renegotiated. I would like an answer from someone who does not, explaining why not.
@Patrick Brompton: same rule applies if I take my dog from Éire into the U. K
@E.J. Murray: You are, with respect, making the mistake of thinking that the EU can take credit for the absence of rabies from Ireland. If the last case in either GB or Ireland was in 1912, then the absence of rabies from these islands was nothing to do with the EU before it came into existence. I am not asking for the EU’s requirement for an Animal Health Certificate to be removed for dogs going to Continental Europe. But if a dog is travelling between GB and Northern Ireland, it is a nonsense for the EU to insist on it having an anti-rabies injection. It would still be un-necessary if the dog crosses the border.
@Jim Deck: it’s a nonsense from GB to Ireland and an equal nonsense from Ireland to GB. Let us have a bonfire of unnecessary rules!
@Patrick Brompton: you mean UK to Ireland or Ireland to UK, don’t you? Those are the names of the two nation states in question, Northern Ireland being a part of UK.
And as for your question- tough. You signed an international treaty in 1998 (GFA). Only way to preserve that with brexit is the NI Protocol.
After that, ‘expecting’ any country to make ‘special’ exceptions for the UK is both embarrassing and a clue to UK’s problem: live up to your agreements OR face consequences.
Now bore off.
@Patrick Brompton: — You are, with respect, making the mistake of thinking that I credit the EU with the absence of rabies in Ireland. Even a brick knows that the EU didn’t exist in 1912. I think it nonsense that someone thinks it nonsense for preventing rabies from making a comeback. Perhaps you should think of another excuse for ditching the Protocol that Johnson signed up to?
@Patrick Brompton: my understanding of that particular situation is that any dogs coming from outside the EU into an EU country is required under EU law to get that vacation. Now that GB is no longer in the EU and since the border with the republic is frictionless to honour the terms of the GFA it is a precaution to allow you free movement through the whole Island of Ireland while here. If there was border checks between the republic and the partitioned six counties this wouldn’t be needed, but I’m afraid the terms of the GFA should never be or hopefully will never be over ruled. And for your information the government in Westminster negotiated the terms of both the GFA and the NI protocol. If they made a bags of any of those negotiations then your frustration should be directed at them.
@Patrick Brompton: Because years were spent negotiating Brexit, the stumbling block of NI to a clean break was identified long before the Brexit vote took place and played down by the Pro Brexit campaign the figureheads of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson.
After the vote it was claimed it could be resolved through technologies that still don’t exist and then through the inclusion of the backstop mechanism proposed by the UK that would activate if the said technologies didn’t appear, the UK then proposed the backstop to become the protocol, because it was deemed to be the workable solution, then they suspended parts of it unilaterally, breaching all previous agreements and now the UK claims renegotiation is the answer, to an agreement that was modified 3 times to their proposed solutions.
@Liam MacSuibhne: This particular rule applies as between GB and Northern Ireland only, not the UK and the Republic.
@Andy mc Laughlin: Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I am no defender of either Johnson or Farrage. I am happy to accept that BoJo made a mess of the NI Protocol. But now that we can see the mess why not amend the Protocol to at least remove totally unnecessary restrictions such as the requirement for an Animal Health Certificate as between GB and Northern Ireland?
@Andy mc Laughlin: My frustration is directed to the EU because it is imposing a rule on the island of Ireland for political reasons which has no basis in reality. I have a vet’s appointment today for a rabies vaccine for the dog which is an unnecessary expense; and another in three weeks’ time to pick up and pay for the Animal Health Certificate. I voted Remain but it is this sort of expensive bureaucracy which makes people in the UK very anti-EU.
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