The Great Facebook Blackout of 2019

Social media is a multiverse where lots of activities happen, it can be seen as another world of its own, but what happens if this multiverse retaliates by shutting down completely, what actions will humans take; restore it or let it go.

During the course of this week, the internet experienced something related to a slight crash in operations from Facebook and its colleagues (Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram) which led many to think of the repercussions of social media shutting down. Facebook wasn’t refreshing, Messenger was lagging, WhatsApp didn’t allow Picture or Video Story update as well as sending and receiving media, Instagram duplicated comments, took time to load posts. Many considered it as a network server problem at first not until it became obvious that is was a general problem.

Facebook proved them wrong in no short time by coming back online and has pinned the error has a ‘server configuration change’ which is obscure enough to prevent probing the company.

A major issue from the temporary server configuration change by Facebook is whether Facebook should make refunds for ads which were faulty along the line either the ads were not delivered or they were delivered halfway on targeted platforms but they could either make refunds or not if they choose to do so as is it written in their terms of service that:

“We cannot predict when issues might arise with our Products. Accordingly, our liability shall be limited to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, and under no circumstance will we be liable to you for any lost profits, revenues, information, or data, or consequential, special, indirect, exemplary, punitive, or incidental damages arising out of, or related to, Facebook Products, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.”

This leaves us with the need to not only focus on one channel or single platform rather we should diversify our processes in making use of multi-channels for our businesses so as to prevent further losses in the future if need arises.