Facebook has been in the news lately for all of the wrong reasons, and it seems that their latest scandal may be one of their biggest yet.
Facebook shares fell nearly 5% on Monday after the company suffered its worst service outage in about 13 years. Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp went down on Monday for almost 6 hours, marking the tech giant’s biggest blunder ever.
A major power outage of the infrastructure that hosts these social media platforms, seemed to be the root cause. Those attempting to access Facebook Monday saw an error message, while Instagram and WhatsApp continued to function but would not load new content.
Facebook took to Twitter to announce the outage, telling users that they were aware of the situation and were working on fixing it.
We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.
— Facebook (@Facebook) October 4, 2021
The timing of the outage came at a pretty suspicious time, coinciding with a new whistleblower report from The Wall Street Journal.
Just hours before the outage occurred, the WSJ continued its expose series “The Facebook Files” where they have been slowly exposing tons of internal Facebook documents that reveal all the no-good dirty deeds going on behind the scenes.
Some of the things revealed by the project include the company’s practice of “whitelisting” VIP accounts, and research done on Instagram suggesting the negative effect it has on the mental health of teenage girls.
The outage also occurred a day after “60 Minutes” aired an interview with Frances Haugen, a whistleblower who accused the company of betraying democracy and provided key internal company documents to the Wall Street Journal’s series.
Haugen is a former product manager on Facebook’s civic misinformation division. She was recruited in 2019 and accepted the offer so long as she could fight against misinformation on the platform.
Facebook assigned her to the Civic Integrity team created to help protect elections. However, it seems that once Facebook got what they wanted out of this team and the 2020 election, they did away with the team completely.
“Like, they basically said, ‘Oh good, we made it through the election. There weren’t riots. We can get rid of Civic Integrity now.’ Fast forward a couple of months, we got the insurrection.”
After leaving the company in May, Haugen made copies of numerous internal files, and accused Facebook of prioritizing its “own profits over public safety — putting people’s lives at risk.”
Facebook has been the leader when it comes to liberal news, and they’ve given the dems’ the ability to control what is deemed the “truth” when it comes to the mainstream media…
After all, we already know that the Biden Administration is colluding with Facebook to control what information is out there, especially when it comes to matters of COVID-19 and the pandemic.
“I have a lot of empathy for Mark [Zuckerberg],” she said. “Mark has never set out to make a hateful platform. But he has allowed choices to be made where the side effects of those choices are that hateful, polarizing content gets more distribution and more reach.”
You guys are great. Please continue this outstanding reporting. The truth must get out of hiding. Thank you!!! ⚡
Biden-Harris agendas have been very unhealthy and mean on every level. Please vote them out. If government doesn’t want to do it, then we the people will.