Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are down for about seven hours

During the afternoon of this Monday (4), WhatsApp, Facebook and

Instagram faced strong instability on a global scale, preventing access to their services. The crash lasted about seven hours, enough to hurt Mark Zuckerberg’s businesses financially. Facebook shares fell more than 5%. In addition, the demand for other means of communication was immediate, and even greater by companies.

In this scenario of coronavirus pandemic , social networks have been the main allies of many businesses. WhatsApp is the messaging app most used by Brazilians, simplifying contact between companies and customers.

Instagram, in turn, has become a showcase for companies and entrepreneurs who want to position themselves digitally and showcase their business.

The damage to Facebook was greater for two reasons. First, because it is the most used application in the world, with about 3 billion users, 2 billion of which access it daily. The other reason is that Facebook owns WhatsApp and Instagram, which together are the most downloaded networks in the world.

Diversification of social networks

It’s not the first time these networks have been down for so long. In 2019, WhatsApp was unavailable for 24 hours. However, every time this happens, the issue of dependence on social networks enters the discussion wheel again.

Shortly after the first signs of instability appeared, the term WhatsApp was already featured in the trendig topics of Twitter (which continued standing) in Brazil.

Furthermore, according to the Downdetector website, which monitors complaints about internet services, around 1 pm there were around 44 thousand complaints against WhatsApp, 13 thousand against Instagram and 6,700 against Facebook.

With this, people also took the opportunity to use other means of communication that almost fell into oblivion. This is the case with SMS, email and even the telephone. What made the complaints about telephone operators to also increase.

The importance of having more alternatives in communication networks also shows a necessary discussion when this breakdown happens.

Because as much as there is Telegram as an alternative to WhatsApp, it doesn’t seem to be prepared for it, as soon as its downloads increased, it also left users hanging.

If you compare seven o’clock yesterday with 24 hours in 2019, it’s a much shorter time, however, two years ago the world was not experiencing a pandemic, home office work was a a distant reality and, probably, social networks were still taking their first steps as a business tool.

This shows that it is not only necessary to diversify communication networks, but also to improve them. them.

What is known?

According to the portal of Technology TechTudo, the error that took Facebook services down was caused by server problems.

The message “”5XX Server Error” , also called “Error 500”, which appeared in the desktop version, gave a clue that the crash was being caused caused by failures in the service’s servers. In other words, the central computer could not complete the user’s message.

This failure caused WhatsApp to stop sending messages, showing a picture of a little clock, while the Facebook and Instagram no longer display images.

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