Facebook, along with Instagram and its messaging apps WhatsApp and Messenger, suffered widespread outages Monday, 4 October, around 9 pm for Indian users and at 11:40 am in the United States (US), bringing the entire network to a halt. The platforms remained down for over six hours, making the outage the longest since March 2019, when the services were inaccessible for about 24 hours across multiple platforms.
Around 5 billion users depend on Facebook and its apps. The company's dominance in the social network sphere is evident. These outages that are becoming increasingly uncommon disrupt the flow of the Internet. In the wake of accusations made by a whistle-blower that Facebook prioritised profits over safety and clamping down misinformation, it is crucial that we examine the colossal control the tech giant has with its share in social networking platforms.