While America reacted Friday to the verdict of the Kyle Rittenhouse case, online, there was an entirely different crisis happening. Three social media platforms- Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp- mysteriously went offline around 12pm eastern time. And what makes it even wilder is the fact that it didn’t just happen in the United States, but in the United Kingdom and Europe.
Unable to access their accounts, users quickly moved to Twitter, which was working at the time, to unload complaints and try to find answers behind the social media blackout. One person wrote, “Can’t post on Facebook or Instagram… AGAIN.”
Another user tweeted: “Getting really tired of the Facebook platform being unreliable. Has anybody found a viable alternative? I am ready to go as soon as one exists.”
One person even commented about accounts disappearing: “Unable to send photos on messenger, accounts keep disappearing. Comments aren’t posting.”
It wasn’t only on Twitter, as one user on Instagram wrote, “Me switching from wifi to 4G internet but Instagram still down #instagramdown.”
While there isn’t much known about the outages, it should be mentioned that this is the second major outage Facebook has faced this week.
On Tuesday, when the first outage happened, it wasn’t just Facebook that was interrupted. The New York Times, Target, Fitbit, Google, Snapchat, The Home Depot, Discord, Nest, Spotify, Etsy, Lowe’s, Shopify and Amazon Web Services all experienced outages on a global scale.
Without releasing much information, Spotify wrote, “We’re aware of some issues right now and are checking them out! We’ll keep you posted.”
Discord also wrote on Twitter, “There was a service interruption. We are investigating what happened, if you want to take a look, we are updating the situation here.”
Although companies have come forward admitting there were outages, none have given a reason as to why the interruptions happened in the first place. While online platforms are known to have issues, for an outage to attack 14 different platforms on the same day seems curious.
This piece was written by Jeremy Porter on November 19, 2021. It originally appeared in RedVoiceMedia.com and is used by permission.
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