Facebook apps crashed. The world resented it a lot
On Monday, for more than five hours, the world tasted life without Facebook and its applications.
In Mexico, politicians were isolated from their constituents. In Turkey and Kenya, traders could not sell their products. And in Colombia, a nonprofit organization that uses WhatsApp to connect victims of gender-based violence with life-saving services found its efforts undermined.
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“Because we have a team in the field, we were able to mitigate some of the most serious risks that today's outage presented,” said Alex Berryhill, director of digital operations for the organization, Cosas de Mujeres. “But that might not have been the case for hundreds of other phone lines around the world. Today has been a great reminder: technologies are tools, not solutions”.
Monday's Facebook blackout was a planetary-scale demonstration of how essential the company's services have become to everyday life. Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger have long been more than just handy tools for chatting and sharing photos. They are critical platforms for doing business, coordinating healthcare, running virtual classes, running political campaigns, responding to emergencies, and much, much more.
