In the world of social media, outages are a very rare occurrence but they make headlines in no time. This is mainly because most of us live and breathe social media. For every simple or complex news, we turn to social media right away and look for an explanation.
Ever since social media became widely popular, people started moving away from television and news channels because of their biased opinions. More people want to hear something rawer and more uncensored and that is exactly what social media is here for. Thanks to reliable internet service providing companies like Spectrum, now everyone has access to news at all times.
From something as simple as election results to news on war and emergency situations, social media keeps us informed all the time. Amidst the ongoing chaos, shutdown of social media does not simply mean it is connected to technical issues, instead most people think of political situations and other causes.
For instance, in countries like China where social media is blocked, complete blackout of information and strong censorship are quite common. So, amidst the two ongoing wars when social media outage happens, most people blame it on strict information censorship as well.
Everything to Know About Meta Outage Fiasco
On 5th March 2024, at around 10:17 a.m. ET, Meta experienced a global shutdown. Most of the users reported on the rival social media X that either they were logged out of their account on Facebook or they were experiencing loading errors. This issue persisted for almost 2 hours and this is not the first time an outage has occurred on Meta. Back in 2021, Meta had a major shutdown for nearly 6 hours causing a lot of outrage. Before 2021, Meta also faced a 24-hour outage back in 2019, the longest shutdown to date.
This issue was soon addressed by the Meta spokesperson, Andy Stone on X. According to the spokesperson, the technical team was working on it and the issue would be resolved as soon as possible. To further address the cause, he also reported that it was not a complete outage but instead, most users were just facing issues accessing a few servers.
To make matters worse, the head of X formally known as Twitter also jumped on the trolling bandwagon and tweeted, “If you are reading this, our servers are still working, and we know why you are here rn”. While this may seem like a simple and rather fun tweet, it was received with a grain of salt by most users.
The issue was resolved within 2 hours and Facebook apologized for the inconvenience as well. After the issue was resolved, the Meta spokesperson tweeted that technical issues were resolved and apologized for the inconvenience. This was quite a humiliating stroke because Facebook had to use a third-party source just to address the issue, which is an open confession that although they have tried replicating X in the form of Threads, they would never be able to beat X.
Moreover, users also complained that this has become a regular occurrence for Meta as outages in a three to six-month span are quite common now.
What Does This Mean for Meta and Its Future?
Meta has been in hot waters since their privacy scandal. As more users are losing trust, it seems that data combination and mixing servers with other sites is causing Meta more harm than good. Now, if Facebook faces a loading issue, it reflects on Instagram and Threads as well.
Users are now getting fed up with this routine occurrence and want Facebook to address this issue seriously. Moreover, it is also affecting the image of Meta as a company and creating confusion in the public. For every outage, that has impacted Facebook and Meta in general, most people address it on third-party rival apps.
Moreover, company media persons are also using third-party apps to address the issue, which does not make things better for the company. Another important thing to keep in mind is the fact that most users do not simply take social media outages as a sign of a technical issue. instead, they think about ongoing political and social issues and take it as a sign that something must be going wrong. This creates a panic situation, hence rushing to other social media sites for confirmation.
Wrap Up
Simply put, the global outage has proved that while Meta is busy working on other projects, acquiring other companies, and spreading more, they are forgetting about maintenance. This can be detrimental to the image of the company and can reduce their user retention as well.