Facebook said late Monday that “the root cause of this outage was a faulty configuration change” and that there is “no evidence that user data was compromised as a result” of the outage. The company apologized and said it is working to understand more about the cause, which began around 11:40 a.m. Eastern Monday.

Facebook was already in the throes of a separate major crisis after whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, provided The Wall Street Journal with internal documents that exposed the company’s awareness of harms caused by its products and decisions. Haugen went public on CBS’s “60 Minutes” program Sunday and is scheduled to testify before a Senate subcommittee Tuesday.

Haugen had also anonymously filed complaints with federal law enforcement alleging Facebook’s own research shows how it magnifies hate and misinformation and leads to increased polarization. It also showed that the company was aware that Instagram can harm teenage girls’ mental health.

The Journal’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 their impact. Nick Clegg, the company’s vice president of policy and public affairs, wrote to Facebook employees in a memo 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.”

The outage didn’t exactly bolster Facebook’s argument that its size and clout provide important benefits for the world. London-based internet monitoring firm Netblocks noted that the company’s plans to integrate the technology behind its platforms — announced in 2019 — had raised concerns about the risks of such a move. While such centralization “gives the company a unified view of users’ internet usage habits,”

Netblocks said, it also makes the services vulnerable to single points of failure.

“This is epic,” said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis for Kentik Inc, a network monitoring and intelligence company. The last major internet outage, which knocked many of the world’s top websites offline in June, lasted less than an hour. The stricken content-delivery company in that case, Fastly, blamed a software bug triggered by a customer who changed a setting.

For hours, Facebook’s only public comment was a tweet in which it acknowledged that “some people are having trouble accessing (the) Facebook app” and said it was working on restoring access. Regarding the internal failures, Instagram head Adam Mosseri tweeted that it feels like a “snow day.”

Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s outgoing chief technology officer, later tweeted “sincere apologies.”

In Monday night’s statement, Facebook blamed changes on routers that coordinate network traffic between data centers. The company said the changes interrupted the communication, which had “a cascading effect on the way our data centers communicate, bringing our services to a halt.”

There was no evidence as of Monday afternoon that malicious activity was involved. Matthew Prince, CEO of the internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare, tweeted that “nothing we’re seeing related to the Facebook services outage suggests it was an attack.”

Facebook did not respond to messages for comment about the attack or the possibility of malicious activity. While much of Facebook’s workforce is still working remotely, there were reports that employees at work on the company’s Menlo Park, California, campus had trouble entering buildings because the outage had rendered their security badges useless.

But the impact was far worse for multitudes of Facebook’s nearly 3 billion users, showing just how much the world has come to rely on it and its properties — to run businesses, connect with online communities, log on to multiple other websites and even order food.

It also showed that despite the presence of Twitter, Telegram, Signal, TikTok, Snapchat and a bevy of other platforms, nothing can easily replace the social network that over the past 17 years has effectively evolved into critical infrastructure. The outage came the same day Facebook asked a federal judge that a revised antitrust complaint against it by the Federal Trade Commission be dismissed because it faces vigorous competition from other services.

There are certainly other online services for posting selfies, connecting with fans or reaching out to elected officials, But those who rely on Facebook to run their business or communicate with friends and family in far-flung places saw this as little consolation.

Kendall Ross, owner of a knitwear brand called I’d Knit That in Oklahoma City, said she has 32,000 followers on her Instagram business page @id.knit.that. Almost all of her website traffic comes directly from Instagram. She posted a product photo about an hour before Instagram went out. She said she tends to sell about two hand-knit pieces after posting a product photo for about $300 to $400.

“The outage today is frustrating financially,” Ross said. “It’s also a huge awakening that social media controls so much of my success in business.”

So many people are reliant on Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram as primary modes of communication that losing access for so long can make them vulnerable to criminals taking advantage of the outage, said Rachel Tobac, a hacker and CEO of SocialProof Security.

“They don’t know how to contact the people in their lives without it,” she said. “They’re more susceptible to social engineering because they’re so desperate to communicate.” Tobac said during previous outages, some people have received emails promising to restore their social media account by clicking on a malicious link that can expose their personal data.

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.

“What it boils down to: running a LARGE, even by internet standards, distributed system is very hard, even for the very best,” tweeted Columbia University computer scientist Steven Bellovin. Twitter, meanwhile, chimed in from the company’s main account on its service, 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 business writer Mae Anderson in New York and AP technology writer Matt O’Brien in Providence, R.I., contributed to this report.

FRANK BAJAK and BARBARA ORTUTAY | AP News

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NEW YORK (AP) — The six-hour outage at Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp was a headache for many casual users but far more serious for the millions of people worldwide who rely on the social media sites to run their businesses or communicate with relatives, fellow parents, teachers or neighbors.

When all three services went dark Monday, it was a stark reminder of the power and reach of Facebook, which owns the photo-sharing and messaging apps.

Around the world, the loss of WhatsApp left many at a loss. In Brazil, the messaging service is by far the most widely used app in the country, installed on 99% of all smartphones, according to tech pollster Mobile Time.

WhatsApp has become essential in Brazil to communicate between friends and families, but also at work — with many businesses using it to stay in touch with customers — at college, and for everyday transactions such as ordering food.

Offices, various services and even the courts had trouble making appointments, and phone lines became overwhelmed.

Hundreds of thousands of Haitians in their homeland and abroad fretted over the WhatsApp outage.

Many of the country’s more than 11 million people depend it to alert one another about gang violence in a particular area or to talk to relatives in the U.S. about money transfers and other urgent issues, while Haitian migrants traveling to the U.S. rely on it to find each other or share key information such as safe places to sleep.

Nelzy Mireille, a 35-year-old unemployed woman who depends on money sent from relatives abroad, said she stopped at a phone repair shop in the capital of Port-au-Prince because she thought her phone was malfunctioning.

“I was waiting on confirmation on a money transfer from my cousin,” she said. “I was so frustrated.”

“I was not able to hear from my love,” complained 28-year-old Wilkens Bourgogne, referring to his partner, who was in the neighboring Dominican Republic, buying affordable goods to bring back to Haiti.

He said he was concerned about her safety since they were unable to communicate for seven hours as Haiti struggles with a spike in gang violence.

“Insecurity makes everyone worry,” he said.

Meanwhile, for small businesses, the Facebook and Instagram outages meant hundreds or thousands of dollars in lost revenue.

“Today’s outage brought our reliance on Facebook — and its properties like Whatsapp and Instagram — into sharp relief,” said Brooke Erin Duffy, professor of communications at Cornell University. She said there are sprawling categories of workers whose livelihoods depend on the platforms functioning.

She said the outage is just one example of how entrepreneurs and small businesses are vulnerable any time Facebook or others introduce a new feature or make some other change that affects the way the sites function.

Sarah Murdoch runs a small Seattle-based travel company called Adventures with Sarah and relies on Facebook Live videos to promote her tours. She estimated the outage cost her thousands of dollars in bookings.

“I’ve tried other platforms because I am wary of Facebook, but none of them are as powerful for the type of content I create,” Murdoch said. As for her losses, “it may only be a few people, but we are small enough that it hurts.”

Heather Lynton has run a portrait studio in Lynton, Indiana, for 18 years. She takes photographs for schools and sports teams and makes yard signs with the photos. She has her own website but said parents and other customers most often try to reach her through social media.

She said she might have lost three or four bookings for photo sessions at $200 a client.

“A lot of people only have a specific window when they can do ordering and booking and things like that,” she said. “If they can’t get a direct answer, they go to someone else.”

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Associated Press (AP) — Facebook and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms suffered a worldwide outage that has lasting more than three hours on Monday. Facebook’s internal systems used by employees also went down. Service has not yet been restored.

The company did not say what might be causing the outage, which began around 11:40 ET. Websites and apps often suffer outages of varying size and duration, but hours-long global disruptions are rare.

“This is epic,” said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis for Kentik Inc. The last major internet outage, which knocked many of the world’s top websites offline in June, lasted less than an hour. The stricken content delivery company in that case, Fastly, blamed it on a software but triggered by a customer who changed a setting.

Facebook’s only public comment so far was a tweet in which it acknowledged that “some people are having trouble accessing (the) Facebook app” and that it was working on restoring access. Regarding the internal failures, Instagram head Adam Mosseri tweeted that it feels like a “snow day.”

So many people are reliant on Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram as a primary mode of communication that losing access for so long can make them vulnerable to criminals taking advantage of the outage, said Rachel Tobac, a hacker and CEO of SocialProof Security.

“They don’t know how to contact the people in their lives without it,” she said. “They’re more susceptible to social engineering because they’re so desperate to communicate.” Tobac said during previous outages, some people have received emails promising to restore their social media account by clicking on a malicious link that can expose their personal data.

The cause of the outage remains unclear. Malory said it appears that Facebook withdrew “authoritative DNS routes” that let the rest of the internet communicate with its properties.

Such routes are part of the internet’s Domain Name System, a key structure that determines where internet traffic needs to go. DNS translates an address like “facebook.com” to an IP address like 123.45.67.890. If Facebook’s DNS records disappeared, apps and web addresses would be unable to locate it.

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.

Facebook is going through a separate major crisis after whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, provided The Wall Street Journal with internal documents that exposed the company’s awareness of harms caused by of its products and decisions. Haugen went public on “60 Minutes” on Sunday and is scheduled to testify before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday.

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 polarization and that Instagram, specifically, can harm teenage girls’ mental health.

The Journal’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 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?”

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