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Same as when any other perceived disaster strikes, news traffic spikes so people can learn more about the disaster. (Cue the pile on of "But this wasn't a real

• squiggleblaz 5y ago
  If you wanted, you could call it a major disruption. I don't know exactly what makes an event a "real disaster", but I agree that suddenly being isolated from your family is a significant event, and if anyone wanted to belittle your characterisation, they should probably recallibrate their understanding of the world. (And they should also be careful to distinguish their oughts and their is-es.)
• serial_dev 5y ago
  There are many possible explanations for this outcome, and probably all of them played some role in this, though it's hard for me to tell which one is the most important. One factor is that people wanted to know how this whole outage evolves (your example). It's similar to a "disaster", so people want to know the latest updates. It's not a surprise, but it might not explain the whole picture. Another factor is that Facebook (when it's up) has a negative effect on most news site's traffic. People might find your news article on Facebook, but most of the time, they just skim the title, and read the comments on Facebook, and they don't bother visiting your website (or they don't stay there and browse the rest of the articles). This could be interesting for you if you've been following the love-hate relationship that news websites and Facebook have been having for almost a decade now.