The outages began as a series of spikes around about noon North American time. Since then, Facebook has been providing some information on Twitter, but the outages appeared to be continuing.
Users aren’t happy. Social media is such an integral part of people’s lives, including messaging services, and so many different forms of marketing, that this outage has become a real issue.
While it is understandable that such gigantic social media platforms are naturally complex, the lack of information is a bit of a worry. The most recent information from Facebook was on Twitter, eight hours ago at the time of writing. No news is not necessarily good news, in this case.
Instagram and Facebook users have been taking the opportunity to let off a bit of sarcasm, which is probably about all anybody can do right at the moment.
Ironically, these big social media outages don’t seem to be getting a lot of media coverage. The overall reaction has been like waiting for a plumber to fix something, and about as incisive. Is the world suddenly becoming well adjusted, or even more apathetic than it looks?
What about all those poor trolls?
Equally ironically, the main inconvenience for many people will be for the trolls, social media psychopaths, and other anti-human misfits. If your heartbroken at the thought of all these wonderful vermin being deprived of their reasons for existence, cheer up.
Try to restrain yourself from the idea of running a Kickstarter fund for bereaved trolls and our ever-popular global collection of political fanatics. The little dears will be back in business, squeaking away quite soon enough for anybody’s tastes.
Post Sript: Facebook is now back up in Australia, at least.
