Facebook Apologizes As Services Come Back Online, Zuckerberg Loses $6B In Hours — Update
Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram went down for hours Monday in a widespread outage, just a day after the “60 Minutes” interview aired detailing a former Facebook employee's account of her time with the company.
Mike Schroepfer, Facebook's chief technology officer, tweeted that Facebook-powered services were down just before 4 p.m. ET.
Schroepfer said Facebook services coming back online around 6:45 p.m ET, and just before that, Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone also apologized on behalf of the company.
On Sunday, the former employee that filed complaints with federal law enforcement was featured on "60 Minutes" and said that Facebook's own research shows the platform amplifies hate, misinformation and political unrest, but that the company hides what it knows.
Frances Haugen, the former Facebook employee and whistleblower, will urge the U.S. Congress on Tuesday to regulate the social media giant, which she plans to liken to tobacco companies that for decades denied that smoking damaged health, according to prepared testimony reported by Reuters.
"When we realized tobacco companies were hiding the harms it caused, the government took action. When we figured out cars were safer with seatbelts, the government took action," said Haugen's written testimony to be delivered to a Senate Commerce subcommittee. "I implore you to do the same here."
Reuters reports that Haugen will tell the panel that Facebook executives regularly chose profits over user safety, and Facebook has downplayed the significance of the documents that Haugen filed.
"The company's leadership knows ways to make Facebook and Instagram safer and won't make the necessary changes because they have put their immense profits before people. Congressional action is needed," she will say. "As long as Facebook is operating in the dark, it is accountable to no one. And it will continue to make choices that go against the common good."
As of 4:00 p.m. ET, the company has seen estimated lost revenues of roughly $60 million, based on estimates calculated by Fortune. Every hour the outage continues, that figure will increase by $13 million or so, the article states. Bloomberg reports that Mark Zuckerberg’s personal wealth has fallen by more than $6 billion in a few hours.
Facebook employees struggled to access office systems during the widespread outage, according to numerous reports.
The Independent reports that such problems indicate there was a major problem with the technology underpinning Facebook’s services. The outlet reports that some of Facebook's problems were related to the domain name system, or DNS, which works something like a phone book for the internet.
Check back with OutKick for updates.