Thread by @MorningBrew

Here is what we know about the Facebook outage yesterday, why it happened, and how many people it affected.

A thread

Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp all suffered global outages yesterday. Messenger, Oculus VR, and Facebook’s internal communications tools also stopped working.

It appears to be the company’s largest outage in history based on the number of users affected.

Facebook-owned platforms disappeared from the internet around 11:40am ET and stayed that way until about 6pm ET, when the apps started to work again.

Late last night, the company confirmed theories that the outage was caused during a routine update to the company’s Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) records.

cc @verge

In other words, someone at Facebook “took away the map telling the world’s computers how to find its various online properties,” cybersecurity reporter @briankrebs wrote.

Plenty of jokes were made. Because Facebook’s internal communications systems were disrupted, some FB employees described it as a “snow day.” And @jack joined many users in dunking on Zuck.

https://twitter.com/MorningBrew/status/1445085765495508992?s=20

But a Facebook outage isn’t all fun & memes. More than 3.5 billion people use FB’s platforms to conduct business and communicate with friends and family.

“Sorry for the disruption today—I know how much you rely on our services to stay connected with the people you care about,” Mark Zuckerberg wrote when the sites had been restored.

It was already an intense day at the office. On Sunday night, former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen, who leaked tens of thousands of pages of documents to the WSJ and the SEC, went on 60 Minutes to argue that the company was prioritizing engagement over user safety.

Facebook shares, which had already been sliding after Haugen revealed herself to be the whistleblower, fell more than 5% yesterday. It was the stock’s worst day all year.

Looking ahead...this week will only get rockier for Facebook as Haugen is set to testify today before a Senate subcommittee about Facebook and Instagram.

morningbrew.com/daily/stories/…