*ISLAMABAD – Facebook grappled Thursday with a widespread outage, forcingmillions of people to taste life without the world’s largest social mediaplatform.*
It was probably the last thing Facebook needed as it stumbles from problemto problem, including outrage over its use of customers’ private data.
The outage began Wednesday afternoon and triggered a flood of gripes ondowndetector.com, which tracks trouble accessing online pages, and on rivalTwitter.
A Downdetector map late Wednesday showed Facebook service troublespersisting in parts of Australia, Asia, Europe, South America and NorthAmerica.
As of early Thursday the problem remained in parts of Europe and Asia,although moaning from America and else where kept coming.
“You guys should look in the mirror at yourselves and hear how you sound,”a person with the handle Johanna wrote on Downdetector around 0745 GMT.
“You make it sound as if it’s the end of the world just because you can’tbe on Facebook. Lmfao. Get a real life instead of a digital one!?!?!?”
Another whose handle is Palmina D’Allesandro mused that time without MarkZuckerberg’s baby might have been good for making the real, human kind.
“Up and running here…..for now…..But I predict a baby boom in 9 months,Remember that day FB went down and people were forced to notice eachother?”, this person wrote.
Some media outlets branded the outage as the biggest in Facebook’s history.
The outage, of unknown origin, also affected Facebook-owned Instagram, aswell as Messenger, although Instagram later said it was back up.
In some cases the apps could be accessed but would not load posts or handlemissives.
[image: Facebook fires engineer who ‘violated user access’ to stalk women]*‘Not a DDoS attack’*
The California firm which has more than two billion users acknowledged theoutage after users noted on Twitter they could not access Facebook or hadlimited functionality.
“We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing theFacebook family of apps. We’re working to resolve the issue as soon aspossible,” a Facebook statement said on Twitter.
A short time later, Facebook indicated the outage was not related to anattack aimed at overwhelming the network.
“We’re focused on working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, but canconfirm that the issue is not related to a DDoS attack,” Facebook said.
Distributed denial of service cyber strikes involve hackers overwhelmingwebsites with tidal waves of simultaneous requests, typically using armiesof computers infected with malicious code.
The social network said there was no update of the situation as eveningarrived in California.
Last November, a Facebook outage was attributed to a server problem, and aSeptember disruption was said to be the result of “networking issues.”
*A grand jury subpoena*
While the outage continued, The New York Times reported that US prosecutorshave launched a criminal investigation into the social network’s practiceof sharing users’ data with companies without letting them know.
A grand jury in New York has subpoenaed information from at least two majorsmartphone makers about such arrangements with Facebook, according to theTimes.
Regulators, investigators and elected officials in the US and elsewhere inthe world have already been digging into the data sharing practices ofFacebook.
The social network’s handling of user data has been a flashpoint forcontroversy since it admitted last year that Cambridge Analytica, apolitical consultancy which did work for Donald Trump’s 2016 electioncampaign, used an app that may have hijacked the private details of 87million users.
“It has already been reported that there are ongoing federalinvestigations, including by the Department of Justice,” a Facebookspokesman said in response to an AFP inquiry.
“As we’ve said before, we are cooperating with investigators and take thoseprobes seriously. We’ve provided public testimony, answered questions, andpledged that we will continue to do so.”
Facebook has shared limited amounts of user data with smartphone makers andother outside partners to enable its services to work well on devices orwith applications.
Regulators, and now prosecutors, appear intent on determining whether thiswas done in ways that let users know what was happening and protectedprivacy.
The social network has announced a series of moves to tighten handling ofdata, including eliminating most of its data-sharing partnerships withoutside companies. – APP/AFP