As Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram went down at about 4.42pm on Monday, global economy lost billions of dollars.
Netblocks, which tracks internet outages and their impact stated that the outage had already cost the global economy a loss of about $160 million per hour. It also hinted that since the outage began, the Chief Executive Officer of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg lost nearly $7 billion.
The shutdown is reminiscent of 2019, when Facebook shut down in its biggest outage till date (a 24-hour shut down).
READ ALSO: Gov. Sanwo-Olu Demands 42% revenue allocation to states
Facebook and its affiliates have 2.9 billion monthly active users. For hours when navigating to Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp websites, a server error appeared, which indicated there was an issue with Facebook’s servers.
Users were also unable to send messages or load new content on the mobile apps for these platforms. Even Oculus, Facebook’s virtual reality platform, and Workplace, its business communication tool, were down.
According to Independent, Facebook’s DNS problems were only a symptom. It said, the system could not have broken down spontaneously, and it was likely that something had happened to the underlying infrastructure – a stray settings change, a physical outage at a server, or something else entirely – that has stopped it from working.
