Unless you have been living under a rock, you might have noticed that Instagram and Facebook stopped working on the 5th of December 2022, on Monday.
This outage has been described as one of the longest outages in the company’s history.
It had been detected that all platforms owned by Facebook like WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook were affected.
In this article, we will look into why is Facebook and Instagram not working a few days back.
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What Happened?
The outage took place at around 11.40 am ET. The company announced the problem was solved at 6.30 pm ET and services would resume as always.
As for the update, Facebook mentioned that there had been several changes in the configuration of the routers that coordinate the traffic of the network between the data centers.
Due to this, the ability to communicate got blocked and lead to other network failures.
Additionally, this also contributed to problems between Facebook and the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), which is an important tool behind the working of the Internet.
When it comes to Border Gateway Protocol, it can be compared to the Postal Service or a GPS.
Like how ZIP codes and map coordinates help with navigation, the BGP dictates where to route the information and traffic.
If a company does not use this gateway protocol, it almost means that its online domains do not exist.
However, the catch here was that messages, searches, and web pages did not stop looking for Facebook’s properties, which then led to many other problems.
Tech expert Brian Krebs has mentioned that many organizations noticed the slowness and disruptions because billions of devices were trying to connect with Facebook, Instagram, etc.
This outage also led to Facebook facing more scrutiny over its policies and products, all of which prompted some to wonder whether Facebook had been hacked.
However, the company maintains that it was just a faulty change in the configuration.
Facebook has also maintained that there has been no leakage of user data as a result of this outage.
What Was The Effect Of The Outage?
As most of us already know, this particular outage did have an effect on businesses and individuals around the world.
Downdetector, a company that tracks outages, has stated that more than 10 million problems have been reported globally; it is also the largest number ever recorded.
Losing access to Facebook has proved to be more than just an inconvenience for many.
For instance, there are many small businesses around the world that use Facebook and Instagram to communicate with their customers.
With no other reliable ways to get in touch with their customers, this has caused significant problems for these businesses.
Similarly, there are still many companies that are still remote working and use WhatsApp to stay in touch, which was also affected by the outage.
What Was Facebook’s Reaction?
Facebook took to Twitter, rather embarrassingly, to post about the outage.
Many people started raising questions as to why and how Facebook started bringing in a lot of technical operations in the past few years.
Many were supportive and stated that it made the platforms more efficient. However, when things do go wrong, it can have a cascading effect on the entire application.
While Facebook has experienced such outages before, all these problems generally get fixed within an hour.
However, the duration of this outage was longer than expected and showcased the problem that takes place when the world’s communications happen to be concentrated in Silicon Valley.
How Much Money Did Facebook Lose Due To This Outage?
Facebook did face quite an effect on its stock prices and revenue. The outage on Facebook and Instagram meant that ads could not be displayed for roughly six hours.
According to research, it has been found that Mark Zuckerberg faced a personal loss of roughly $6 billion, thereby dropping the shares by 5%.
Others also estimate that the company could have faced a loss of revenue of more than $60 million, which can prove to be quite a blow to Facebook’s reputation.
What Are Some Other Reasons Why Is Facebook And Instagram Not Working?
If your Facebook and Instagram is not working now, then there are some other reasons behind the problem. Let us look into some common fixes behind the problems:
1. Restart The App
If your Facebook or Instagram is still not working, you can start by looking into some local issues. At times, apps stop working for the simplest reasons.
In such cases, you just need to close and restart the application. Or, you could try logging out and then logging back in.
2. Check For Updates
At times, Facebook and/or Instagram may stop working because you are operating an older version of the app.
In such cases, you need to download and install the latest version of the apps.
All you need to do is to visit the Apple App Store (for iPhone devices) or the Google Play Store (for Android devices) and download the latest app versions.
3. Restart Your Device
If Facebook and Instagram stop working, you can simply restart your mobile or computer device. In fact, it has been estimated that you can solve nearly 90% of your problems this way.
4. Check Your Internet Connection
Another reason why your Facebook and Internet is not working is that you are not connected to the Internet.
To check whether you are connected to the Internet, you can visit another website or app to check whether it is working.
If not, then it is possible that you are not connected to the Internet. In such cases, you can restart your Wi-Fi router.
Final Thoughts
The reason why Facebook and Instagram is not working can vary, as well as the time of the outage.
The outage that took place on Monday was an exceptionally long one; Facebook has mentioned that such problems will not occur in the future.
If your Facebook and Instagram are not working, you can try to apply the common fixes mentioned above.
If these do not work, you will simply have to wait for the company to resolve the problem as soon as possible.
