Live data from Hacker News

Facebook, Instagram go down around the world in an apparent outage

usatoday.com

91–100 of 351 posts

Re: Facebook, Instagram go down around the world in an apparent outage

#91
post #74
post #59

Serious question: Was any value lost? (this may appear sarcastic) Facebook obviously loses some ad revenue and Facebook customers may lose sales. But do Facebook/Instagram users suffer? But how does losing social media for several hours affect the quality of life of users?

I am not a big fan of social media too but you will be suprised ... For example here in Sudan (East Africa) the country has been under continuous protests for over 2 months now (53 dead, 4k+ detained, 500+ injured) with strong censorship from the regime & silents from the internatinal community. So facebook, whatsapp & twitter are the only media left for the people to fight for freedom —> every Thursday is the main p…

No disrespect intended, but what's the rationale behind protesting just one day a week?

It just seems completely unproductive, people can't affect any kind of change when they're scheduling it between watching the football and eating big macs.

Re: Facebook, Instagram go down around the world in an apparent outage

#92
post #90

It looks like something much larger is going on. If you look at the front page of https://downdetector.com/ you'll see most major sites/backbones are having issues (Verizon/ATT/Sprint/CenturyLink/TMobile/Comcast/Level3/etc).

HN was down for a minute.

Re: Facebook, Instagram go down around the world in an apparent outage

#93
post #71
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine the NSA uses an optical tap device. These devices create identical copies and require no power or management.

That's why it's called PRISM. It's exactly what you describe. Splitting an optical signal into 2 using, basically, a prism. One signal goes out to the net as normal, the other goes to their own datacenters, that they keep continually building and expanding. The newer ones are being build on military bases, for added security. Check em out. Look at the size and cost of them. Some are over a million sq. ft. That's a lo…

Nah, PRISM referred to the front door for lawful access to customer records under warrant. That's the sort of portal that China once hacked Gmail by gaining access to.. the companies explicitly built those access relays.

The beam splitter stuff (e.g. Room 641A) went by different codenames, TRAFFICTHIEF and TURMOIL iirc. That's the back door.

Re: Facebook, Instagram go down around the world in an apparent outage

#94
post #90

It looks like something much larger is going on. If you look at the front page of https://downdetector.com/ you'll see most major sites/backbones are having issues (Verizon/ATT/Sprint/CenturyLink/TMobile/Comcast/Level3/etc).

That site relies on user reports.

I strongly suspect users are reporting "my Internet is having troubles" because their FB, Messenger, etc. isn't working right.

For example, in the comments of the T-Mobile outage page, there's stuff like "Haven't been able to upload anything to social media all day" and "Cannot send pictures through whatsapp and fb messenger".

Re: Facebook, Instagram go down around the world in an apparent outage

#95
post #74
post #59

Serious question: Was any value lost? (this may appear sarcastic) Facebook obviously loses some ad revenue and Facebook customers may lose sales. But do Facebook/Instagram users suffer? But how does losing social media for several hours affect the quality of life of users?

I am not a big fan of social media too but you will be suprised ... For example here in Sudan (East Africa) the country has been under continuous protests for over 2 months now (53 dead, 4k+ detained, 500+ injured) with strong censorship from the regime & silents from the internatinal community. So facebook, whatsapp & twitter are the only media left for the people to fight for freedom —> every Thursday is the main p…

Interesting point in general, but...

What I asked was what is the effect of sporadic interruptions of few hours. I mean, if Facebook had 30% availability, would I lose anything valuable from the experience? Is it that we are just used to it and and want it to be there always?

The value of 99.5 availability fore __users__ is not clear to me. Instant messaging is exception for this.

Re: Facebook, Instagram go down around the world in an apparent outage

#96
post #90

It looks like something much larger is going on. If you look at the front page of https://downdetector.com/ you'll see most major sites/backbones are having issues (Verizon/ATT/Sprint/CenturyLink/TMobile/Comcast/Level3/etc).

Ironically https://outage.report/ is down too.

Edit: it's back now (8:37 PM UTC)

Re: Facebook, Instagram go down around the world in an apparent outage

#97

Facebook's own status dashboard ( https://developers.facebook.com/status/dashboard/ ) showed no issues or outtage just 30 min ago. I run a messenger bot platform - the webhooks stopped being delivered _hours_ ago... nothing on their status page until it had been down for hours. Their current issue... "We are currently experiencing issues that may cause some API requests to take longer or fail unexpectedly. We are inv…

I'm pretty sure businesses use status pages to divert attention from support resources, they never seem to give useful information about outages and half the time don't even mention the outage.

Re: Facebook, Instagram go down around the world in an apparent outage

#99
post #90

It looks like something much larger is going on. If you look at the front page of https://downdetector.com/ you'll see most major sites/backbones are having issues (Verizon/ATT/Sprint/CenturyLink/TMobile/Comcast/Level3/etc).

That site relies on user reports. I strongly suspect users are reporting "my Internet is having troubles" because their FB, Messenger, etc. isn't working right. For example, in the comments of the T-Mobile outage page, there's stuff like "Haven't been able to upload anything to social media all day" and "Cannot send pictures through whatsapp and fb messenger".

Yeah in Turkey people thought government is slowing down/blocking the whole internet

Re: Facebook, Instagram go down around the world in an apparent outage

#100
post #91
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a big fan of social media too but you will be suprised ... For example here in Sudan (East Africa) the country has been under continuous protests for over 2 months now (53 dead, 4k+ detained, 500+ injured) with strong censorship from the regime & silents from the internatinal community. So facebook, whatsapp & twitter are the only media left for the people to fight for freedom —> every Thursday is the main p…

No disrespect intended, but what's the rationale behind protesting just one day a week? It just seems completely unproductive, people can't affect any kind of change when they're scheduling it between watching the football and eating big macs.

I doubt Sudanese protestors are watching football and eating big macs on their off-time. Most likely limiting their protests to once a week 1. makes for a single, effective push, 2. keeps the protestors and their families from starving.
Post reply on HN