Doomscrollers, be on alert. On Tuesday morning, the META platform, which includes Facebook and Instagram had a sizable outage (nearly 500,000 users reporting according to some estimates) that, in some cases, logged users out in mid-scroll.
While META has not given any reason behind the problems, it appears that as of around 11 a.m. Houston time, the problems had been resolved. However, some users are being forced to login to gain access.
Ironically, one billionaire suffered while another likely benefited. X (formerly known as Twitter) CEO and perpetual internet troll, poked his META rival Mark Zuckerberg by letting those who had raced to his platform when Facebook failed know they were still open for business.
The failure of META (even on a macro scale) does demonstrate how volatile social media networks can be. If one goes down, netizens don’t simple shut off their devices. Instead, they race to whatever platform remains online. In this latest case, that was Musk’s X.
If you didn’t even notice the outage, congratulations and say “Hi” to TikTok for us.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
