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These big outages always seem to be either BGP or DNS config issues. I read yesterday's outage cost Facebook about $60 million for every hour they were down, and their stock price certainly took a nosedive yesterday. What a shame... 
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The stock price of Facebook in the near term will likely recover just fine. On the other hand, I think the timing of this massive outage across multiple social media platforms seems really suspicious. At first glance the BGP & DNS configuration thing seems like a massive blunder on the part of Facebook unless it was done on purpose.
With the whistle-blower report, which included thousands of pages of leaked documents, hitting the news this past weekend I can't help but think this outage was done on purpose to allow IT people at Facebook to cover up some incriminating evidence. I wonder if there were settings or features that could only be changed or eliminated if the sites were taken offline temporarily.
Whether the outage was by accident or on purpose Facebook has even bigger problems. One news article made a good case that Facebook's best days are probably long past. A lot of the company's best talent departed years ago. The worst thing of all is Facebook has been losing its appeal with young people (teens, 20-somethings, etc). "Facebook is for old people," was the damning judgment laid down by an 11 year old in Facebook's own internal market research. Facebook executives can withstand being called to the carpet in front of Senators who want to get all yelly for the cameras. What they can't endure is the taste-makers of the world turning their noses up to their product. So, in recent years it looks like they've been getting more aggressive and sleazy in their tactics. They're probably doing so out of desperation.
Not that I want to defend the tactics of Facebook at all, but there is something extremely hypocritical on the part of the press as it reports how Facebook altered its algorithms to put more outrage-inspiring content in front of the faces of site visitors. The news business has been doing that shit for 30 years. Fox News defined the business model for repackaging news as a sick form of emotionally amplified entertainment. Amp up the level of anger, fear and outrage in the reporting in return for boosted ratings and more ad revenue. The other 24 hour networks followed suit, as have many Internet-based media outlets. There's no doubt Fox News got some of its own inspiration from anger-fueled talk radio shows in the 1980's. Other kinds of entertainment, such as unscripted "reality TV" shows, trade in the same kinds of trashy, emotionally inflammatory button pushing. Ultimately what Facebook did to manipulate site visitors is nothing new.Comment
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It was either some form of sabotage or a simple technical SNAFU, the story that they needed to shut themselves down to get rid of incriminating evidence makes no sense at all.
Never underestimate how a small outage can become a major issue within a large, over-organized organization...
What happened yesterday wasn't a "DNS or BGP" SNAFU perse. It was someone or something pushing a command causing their routers to become isolated. If that command was issued by someone with bad intentions in mind, remains an open question, to which we probably never will get an answer... Then their anycasted DNS system, apparently running somewhat separate from their main datacenters, but being disconnected from the backbone, disconnected itself from the Internet by withdrawing BGP advertisements. This is exactly what it is designed to do, once a site becomes isolated from the backbone, it stops advertising itself to the world. They just never expected all sites to become isolated all at once...
With their backbone down, DNS down, they needed to get their physical asses down into the affected datacenters. Their own security theater probably made physical access all the more difficult, especially with their network now being down and a lot of internal tools not working: Nobody was able to access that intranet page that listed the phone number they needed to call in case the Intranet was down. :P
What's shameful is that a 100 billion+ dollar company with more fiber than many global carriers can't provide for a working "out-of-band" access solution to their core infrastructure. Once the core network disintegrated, they were completely dead in the water...
As for Facebook itself: It's a platform that facilitates hate and anger. It has been clear to me for a while now, that whatever they did to their "promotion algorithms" to increase "engagement" primarily stimulated the bad stuff, because that's what drives "engagement". Facebook used to be a semi-useful tool to connect with people across the globe, it stopped being that many years ago. Now it's a platform for hate, anger, corporate pushed spam and wannabe hotshots, all the while the last bit of privacy of their users is being sold off to the highest bidder du jour.Comment
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Corporations have done all sorts of things in a panic trying to eliminate evidence that could be used against them legally in civil or criminal action. Even if the action is illogical. In the past they've shredded giant amounts of paper documents. These days many things are digital. Given what the whistle-blower already exposed, I don't know what else Facebook could possibly hide from discovery. Still, I wouldn't put it past them to try covering up things Francis Haugen didn't already give to the SEC.Originally posted by Marcel BirgelenComment
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Yeah, they probably have a lot of shit to hide, but why would they need to shut down all their platforms to get rid of that? The only thing that would halfway make sense is that the network outage also took down their own building access systems, as employees weren't even able to open doors and check into work. But pulling a Jurassic Parc just to get rid of some evidence simply doesn't make sense. You have a horde of high-paid hackers on your payroll, they sure can make a bunch of files, e-mails and WhatsApp conversations disappear without disabling the electric fence around the raptor compound.
If this was on-purpose and initiated by "management" themselves, then the only reason I can see for it is to draw the attention away from the OTHER Facebook news, as their outage was the new #1 news item and not the whistleblower revelations. Yet, this would be a pretty expensive move and if it ever came to light, I'm pretty sure the shareholders will vote Zuckerberg out of it.Comment
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Yeah, for some it was apparently like kicking off from a heroine addiction...
I personally didn't mind the Facebook outage at all and I barely noticed it. I keep WhatsApp around for those few people to stubborn to use something different, not tied into Zuckerberg's empire, but I noticed that some pages had some issues loading, due to their social media tie ins. Then again, I'm pretty sure I will notice a large Google outage almost directly...Comment
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Amen, Brother, 100 times over. The same applies to Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Parler, Nextdoor, and all the rest of them.Originally posted by Marcel BirgelenComment
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The 24 hour cable "news" networks aren't in a position to sell off information about its viewers to advertisers. However, they've long been making a LOT of ad money by yanking the chains of their viewers. Facebook did not invent the idea of sticking emotionally inflammatory content in front of viewer faces to keep them watching in vigil. Cable news networks have been doing it since at least the early 1990's. Certain events were major inflection points which they used to draw their inspiration. The launch of the first Gulf War in 1991 helped one 24 hour network in particular. Various other events in the 1990's turned into media sensations. The 9-11 disaster took things to a whole new level, and is singularly responsible for why almost any TV news show is visually polluted with Chryon ticker spam. You have all the scrolling headlines, with the text blurbs over-simplifying and emotionally amplifying the news item. By the late 2000's when Facebook first became popular the template had already been well defined.Comment
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The one thing Facebook and Twitter have done is, they give everybody the same kind of voice. This results in WAY more arguments between people (who don't even know each other) than there ever were before, and lots of arguments whipped up by people who don't even live in the area being argued about. Just look at the "comments" on any news article. It only takes three or four comments before somebody calls somebody an idiot or worse and it descends from there. The same thing happens on newspaper and TV station websites.
The media likes to note that "the country is so divided now." I would argue that the country has ALWAYS been divided; it's just that you never heard from most people. Before social media, the only people you would argue with were people you knew, and in most cases, most people spent most of their time hanging around with like-minded friends. Nowadays, people go online looking for a fight.
The divisions of this country (including the racism) have always been there, they've just been below the surface. Social media has brought it all out into the open, in all its ugly glory. So, naturally there are people who want to tamp the lid back down, but good luck with that.
As for Facebook and its "old" problem, that's for damn sure. Just a few years ago, all of our theater employees had Facebook accounts and we were friends with all of them. Now, most of them don't have an account and the ones that do, haven't posted since 2019 or so. Facebook is dead to anyone under about 25.Comment
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The entire argument right now is that many of those social media outlets and Facebook in particular have their promotion algorithms adapted to such extend, that they promote content that stimulates engagement. As such, not everybody does have an equal voice anymore. Comments that induce hate and anger are much more likely to stimulate engagement than anything else. So, if you post something enraging on your Facebook, it's far more likely to end up in the Facebook feed of your "friends and followers" than if you post something much more reasonable.Originally posted by Mike Blakesley View PostComment
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Yep. That's it in nutshell. Post something pleasant on Facebook and its algorithms may let the post get lost in the newsfeed tide. Only the closest few friends in one's friends list may get a notification about the post. If the post is angry about something it will get more attention. Posts that push the limits, that even go into trolling territory will get even more attention. People can go too far and land themselves in "Facebook Jail," but even that is a mystery due to very inconsistent ways how site conduct rules are enforced.Comment
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So you're saying, if I post something innocuous, I should start with I AM SO PISSED! Then proceed with my joke comment or whatever.Yep. That's it in nutshell. Post something pleasant on Facebook and its algorithms may let the post get lost in the newsfeed tide.Comment
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Or, post a picture of a cute kitten, first.
Score bonus points if it's a picture of a cute kitten being rescued from a storm drain by a fireman!
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