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Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp Outage
- iag 6y agoMessenger is currently unusable on both web and mobile. edit - reports of Instagram and Whatsapp being affected too: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/12/10/outages-reported-across-facebook-services/ https://www.macrumors.com/2020/12/10/outages-reported-across...
- can16358p 6y agoInstagram DMs are also affected.
- rounakdatta 6y agoWho uses Instagram DMing btw?
- mcmoose75 6y agoFor myself and others in my social circle (mid 30's Americans), we'll often comment on something in each others' Instagram Stories and have a casual chat. Usually these are quick conversations, and longer ones are on some other pure messaging platform.
- Frost1x 6y agoI find it funny how every single service builds out a community infrastructure, complete with messaging for near-synchronous and more async communication. I've always been a fan of distributed resiliency but when it comes to basic communications, I don't have the time or motivation to hunt down the service and method of communication within that service some person chooses to use. I much prefer ubiquitous communication, at least from a user interaction stand-point. Older messenger applications often supported handfuls to dozens of popular communication systems so you could interact with one touch point/interface, and coukd still benefit from the fact the marketplace was forcing some competition while your communication wouldn't be strangled by some single private entity's policies or actions.
- disgruntledphd2 6y agoEvery social network application expands until it has the features of Facebook, or is replaced by ones which can.
- dr-detroit 6y agoIts sex apps all the way down.
- bakies 6y agoIt's easiest to share instagram posts via instagram DM to friends.
- C19is20 6y agoI used igdm. Until I stopped using ig itself, several weeks ago. Like I did FB many, many years ago. I didn't close down the accounts either. I just stopped using them. Stopping that, and a good clear out of bookmarks [deleted], mail-subscriptions etc has forced me to restart my onlininess (save for very basic email). Feel much better, and I'd like to start the next year 'clean'.
- arleny 6y agoAs a 22YO, I use it just as much as messenger. The generation a under me uses insta DMs even more.
- intellirogue 6y agoInstagram DMs got merged with FB Messenger recently.
- vezycash 6y agoFeels intentional. Last time fb was being probed, the site went down too.
- KaiserPro 6y agoLol. You're assuming facebook is that organised...
- bzb6 6y agoThat’s absolutely ridiculous. What exactly are you implying?
- AntiImperialist 6y agoThat would be a terrible strategy. Imagine how many people who have only used Facebook messenger between them are switching to another messaging platform now; some of them may like the alternative better.
- keyle 6y agoPlease if you feel like making claims like that, provide context and at least a reference. Otherwise it sounds like conspiracy theories and ... oh who's this guy at my door in a black suit, he has a shiny ligh...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- georgeolaru 6y agoBack to SMS.
- bitcharmer 6y agoWhy? Is messenger your only option? I personally don't use Messenger but there's still WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, etc.
- fowlie 6y agoHow many people can you reach with WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Messenger? How many people can you reach with SMS? Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2365 https://xkcd.com/2365
- LeonM 6y agoIn Europe, Whatsapp is ubiquitous. FB Messenger and iMessage are pretty rare here. Edit: looks like I was wrong. I'm in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands and our neighbouring countries, Whatsapp is ubiquitous, so I presumed the rest of Europe was the same. I guess this proves that assumption is the mother of all failures.
- Hansi 6y agoIn your country/social group. Messanger has a bigger footprint than WhatsApp in some of my social groups in Europe.
- coddle-hark 6y agoAlso in Europe: The exact opposite.
- pqs 6y agoEurope is very heterogeneous. I'm sure social network usage is very different in Lithuania, Bulgaria, Spain, Norway or the UK.
- 6y ago
- spzb 6y agoThat history graph’s not looking too healthy for the past couple of months.
- xanth 6y agoYep down for me too.
- cblconfederate 6y agoQuick, build a competitor
- acvny 6y agoThere are hundreds of facebook alternatives websites already and dozens of Instagram and Messenger and WhatsApp. I guess tiktok will literally replace Instagram very soon (not because of this outage, but it will help).
- mdaniel 6y agoIsn't tiktok videos? Of the people who I watch interact with Instagram, easily 90% of their consumption is pictures Watching even a short video isn't the same experience as rapidly scrolling through a gallery of pictures
- fsflover 6y agoFor Instagram: https://the-federation.info/pixelfed https://the-federation.info/pixelfed.
- yurishimo 6y agoDo you have invites for https://pixelfed.social/ https://pixelfed.social/ ? Would love one if someone has them... daron@hey.com
- Hamuko 6y agoGood idea. We can also see which happens first: Facebook fixing its outage, or Facebook buying up that competitor.
- cblconfederate 6y agoFix the outage, then blatantly copy the competitors' features and force it to their existing user base.
- arendtio 6y ago
- mmccaff 6y agoThis red "major outage" status has been reported on their dashboard since at least Dec 2, when an (unrelated to messenger) api bug was introduced that I've been waiting on a fix for. It has been surprisingly slow to get a fix or an update.
- vitus 6y agoDepending on the company, "major" can be used to mean a number of things, such as visible and painful customer impact, or significant revenue impact. Based on the description of the outage (issues serving new ads to Messenger), it reads like the latter. > We are currently investigating an issue where creating new ads with app_destination as MESSENGER results in the following error ... Admittedly if it does have significant revenue impact, I'm surprised that change hasn't been rolled back or otherwise mitigated in the week+ that the incident's been open. Or maybe it has, and nobody remembered to close the incident.
- TLightful 6y agoExcellent new mode. Leave it.
- florianmari 6y agoIt's not only Facebook, a lot of services, Deezer, some operators in France... https://downdetector.fr/ https://downdetector.fr/
- avh02 6y agoi'm not necessarily familiar with all the services (or the specific dependencies) on that list, but a lot of it will be a knock on effect from e.g: fb login not working as expected People will very often see it as "service x with fb login is broken"
- florianmari 6y agoI work in one of these companies and I can confirm that is a network outage and even our internal tools hosted in our datacenter (so no dependencies with fb) are down
- avh02 6y agoI stand corrected :) Any info on what network/operator/operator/etc is suffering the issue? (just so people know about it if it's public, i don't see anything on HN at least) Thanks, and good luck!
- walrus01 6y agoI sincerely hope that AS3356 hasn't broken a big chunk of the Internet again. https://isc.sans.edu/forums/diary/CenturyLink+Outage+Causing+Internet+Wide+Problems/26518/ https://isc.sans.edu/forums/diary/CenturyLink+Outage+Causing... https://www.zdnet.com/article/centurylink-outage-led-to-a-3-5-drop-in-global-web-traffic/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/centurylink-outage-led-to-a-3-...
- dahfizz 6y agoMy bet is BGP. Its always BGP.
- 6y ago
- l1ghthouse 6y agoThat explains all the new Telegram contacts :P
- m-p-3 6y agoIt makes me sad those aren't new Signal users :(
- adamcstephens 6y agoSignal needs to up its game. The experience is very far from being as polished as Telegram.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- noarchy 6y agoI wish Telegram secret conversations carried over to multiple devices. This is a thing I don't have to worry about with Signal or WhatsApp.
- danalloway 6y agothat tells you a little something about how their encryption keys work :)
- elcomet 6y agoWhatsApp secret conversations don't carry either over multiple devices if you don't activate sync with google drive (which kind of defeats the purpose of encryption anyway).
- l1ghthouse 6y agoHow iMessage does it: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/security/sec70e68c949/1/web/1 https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/security/sec70e68c949/...
- 6y ago
- eric5544 6y agoAirtable also very sluggish
- rattray 6y ago"But senators, we can't break up these three unrelated services because they all use the same messaging infrastructure!"
- abernard1 6y agoI laughed at this because I thought the same thing. Conspiratorial or no, that line of argument won't fly. Saying everything is so integrated that it can't possibly be decentralized is basically proof of monopoly.
- the-dude 6y agoIIRC this is exactly what MS claimed about bundling IE : it was tied into the kernel.
- breckenedge 6y agoYes that was a defense. Explorer.exe and IE were intimately tied together. Remember “active desktop”? You could make your Windows desktop background a web page. Crazy times...
- hsuduebc 6y agoDid they publish any info about these incidents? It would be interesting to see where these robust systems fail and how.
- clon 6y agoMS Teams is down for us as well. Possibly a spike related to people looking for a backup.
- speeder 6y agoWanted to see the probably interesting heatmap in downdetector but... downdetector is down :(
- marcodave 6y agowe need a downdetector detector !
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mkl95 6y agoWhatsapp is extremely dominant in my country, but I keep encouraging friends and acquaintances to install Telegram. As far as I know, there won't be anything preventing FB from geoblocking European users when the company eventually gets in some serious trouble, like it just did in the US.
- jbverschoor 6y agoWhy telegram and not signal?
- tsjq 6y agoCoz , if a lot of people use Signal, govts would surely want to peek into the chats
- bauerd 6y agoApplies to every messenger
- mkl95 6y agoBecause Signal is virtually unknown here. Telegram has a small, but growing following. I'm aware that Telegram uses homegrown encryption which is not ideal.
- cute_boi 6y agoMark Zuckerberg Outside "Senators see how many lives and business depends on Messenger" ? Mark Zuckerberg Inside "Fak how many advertisement money and user data we lost due to this outage."
- iag 6y agoUpdate: looks like most services are accessible again https://downdetector.fr https://downdetector.fr
- Triv888 6y agoThey want to show off what would happen if someone else would be hosting them? /s...
- tmcronn 6y agoThe subject of the antitrust suits filed against Facebook came up in a Facebook comment thread for me yesterday. Some guy piped up and stated, essentially, that "Zuckerberg is too rich and too big and nothing will happen.". He evidently had never heard of Standard Oil or Ma Bell.
- ourcat 6y agoIt looks like they've had issues for a while now. 'December 2nd' ? " Invalid Page Welcome Message for Messenger Destination Ads" - The thought of 'ads' in a private messaging app repulses me. I don't use any of these three apps. Mostly since they all require you hand over your mobile phone number. Which then becomes a very powerful 'foreign key'/unique identifier to so many other third or fourth-party marketing databases which might also have it.
- cecilpl 6y agoThe subject of the antitrust suits filed against Facebook came up in a Facebook comment thread for me yesterday. Some guy piped up and stated, essentially, that "Zuckerberg is too rich and too big and nothing will happen.". He evidently had never heard of Standard Oil or Ma Bell.
- hnlmorg 6y agoStandard Oil was broken up over 100 years ago and Bell System took 70 years of antitrust complaints (the last case ran through courts for over a decade!) and even then Bell eventually caved and broke themselves up. Never say never and all that...but it's not like past precedence has shown us the courts are trigger happy when it comes to breaking up monopolies.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ForTheWin98 6y ago"Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome" With Facebook products, you see outages in December and May. Why? Those are the last few weeks to complete your project before your performance review. Miss this window and you find yourself in career trouble. Facebook employees put a tremendous amount of pressure on themselves during these months. I would not be surprised if this outage was caused by a bad pull request related to a new project.
- hyeomans 6y agodo people get fired or not promoted?
- semitones 6y agoIn FAANG for typical SWEs it is rare for to outright get fired for a mistake. How you handle the mistake matters a lot though. Usually if things are less than perfect during performance reviews, you just don't get promoted.
- wrigby 6y agoDepending on your current level, this can be the same thing (Facebook has an "engineering progression" - there's a time frame within which you're expected to be promoted to a certain level).
- frakkingcylons 6y ago> there's a time frame within which you're expected to be promoted to a certain level What happens if you don’t? You get fired or put on a PIP?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- crakhamster01 6y agoOne or the other, I think they usually try to put you on a PIP before firing though. It can feel like an up or out kind of culture, but the timelines are fairly reasonable IMO - e.g. they give you 5 years to progress from an entry-level SWE to mid/senior-level SWE (L3 -> L5).
- turdnagel 6y agoAs of 12:31 PM eastern on December 10, the status page does show "Major Outage," but it had been showing that related to a totally separate Messenger issue since the 2nd.
- WaitWaitWha 6y ago> OH, thank God! - William Preston as Depth Gauge in Waterworld (1995)
- amelius 6y agoAll the more reason to break them up ... No more single point of failure.
- _carbyau_ 6y agoCurious, do these outages affect Oculus users too? I am so looking at VR in the near future but crap like this rules certain products right out.