Facebook And Related Sites Go Down, Chaos Ensues

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has been the Managing Editor of Ordinary Times since 2018, is a widely published opinion writer, and appears in media, radio, and occasionally as a talking head on TV. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter@four4thefire. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew'sHeard Tell Substack for free here:

Related Post Roulette

35 Responses

  1. Michael Cain says:

    Come now. Haven’t we all inadvertently crushed the corporate network at least once?Report

    • Marchmaine in reply to Michael Cain says:

      I definitely did *not* click that link.Report

    • JS in reply to Michael Cain says:

      I’d be surprised if that wasn’t the case.

      I once attended an 800am Monday morning emergency meeting called “Do not mount the user folder to /tmp”. This is because, of course, every Sunday night a garbage collection routine would empty out /tmp, as it’s just there to hold temporary files, and if it wasn’t cleaned regularly it’d bloat up.

      Someone, who wasn’t at the meeting because he was in the middle of a flight overseas but was going to arrive to a TON of angry emails — had, in fact, mounted /user to /tmp, and then didn’t dismount it. And then hopped a flight to Europe for a work trip.

      So around 2:00am, the garbage collector cleaned out /tmp. And also /user, the entire user partition with all the useful data.

      I wasn’t thrilled to be there at 800am for a problem I had nothing to do with, but it was called by the angry people who had gotten woken up at 2:00am as numerous critical processes started failing and automated “OH CRAP” alerts had fired off.

      It took them about 12 hours to get everything back up.Report

  2. Burt Likko says:

    Well. I guess we’ll have to back to using MySpace, Friendster, GeoCities, or even (horrors!) blogs!Report

  3. Jaybird says:

    Former vice-presidential candidate points out that this looks exactly like an op:

    Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Jaybird says:

      Current nutbar posts unsubstantiated conspiracy theory without evidence to twitter because it is a bigger soapbox than the Kinko’s copier at 3:00 a.m. Wishthinker reposts to just ask questions. In other news, Franco is still dead.

      Yes FB has had a lot of bad press and the whistleblower interview last night was horrible for them but the idea that someone did something idiotic engineering wise is still a better explanation for the shut down.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw says:

        My theory is that they got hacked. *BAD*.

        The “something idiotic engineering wise” involved ignoring security best practices and they got hit by somebody or a group of somebodies like DarkSide.Report

        • Saul Degraw in reply to Jaybird says:

          Brian Kerbs makes the most sensible argument. Someone made a silly mistake, even engineers are capable of this. The timing of the event is letting people fly their rejected Shadowrun games in the open.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw says:

            Shadowrun? Where the hell did that come from?

            Wait, have you been playing a Shadowrun game? Without telling us?Report

            • Saul Degraw in reply to Jaybird says:

              The simplest answer to what happened is that an engineer made a silly mistake and it took everything down for a few years. The timing of the event is just a damned coincidence. It is not the sign of some cyberpunk dystopia adventure. A good chunk of humanity seems to hate the idea of coincidence though and is letting their freak flags fly. It isn’t harmless fun, it is conspiratorial nonesense. Spike Cohen has no authority just because he was a former candidate for VEEP.Report

            • Doctor Jay in reply to Jaybird says:

              I’m with Jaybird on this, Saul. I had no idea until this moment that you even knew what Shadowrun was.

              And I think it’s awesome that you do, by the way. Also, that was an excellent use of it in conversation.Report

          • JS in reply to Saul Degraw says:

            “The timing of the event is letting people fly their rejected Shadowrun games in the open.”

            Like the troll with tailored pheromones, strength mods, skeletal mods, a combat computer, and a truly ridiculous amount of bio-ware due to blatant rules abuse?

            He was a truly loved and incredibly likeable chap, mostly due to the pheromones, and quite capable of turning you to a find chunky mist. And definitely not allowed to use him in campaigns because of “rules” and “balance” and “You can’t go around using a crew mounted weapon as a hand-gun when you can’t solve problems by mind-whamming people with your pheromones”…

            Poor Hugbear. Strangled by the DM before he really got to fly free.Report

  4. North says:

    Pity it wasn’t twitter, or better yet both.Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to North says:

      The thing is that it wasn’t just FB, it was instagram and whatsapp as well. Whatsapp is an actually very useful communication tool used by billions of people across the world to maintain contact with friends and family at home or abroad. My partner uses it to call her family and friends in Singapore. A lot of small businesses depend on instagram for sales and advertising.Report

  5. Doctor Jay says:

    Count me among those who think it is utterly unrelated to whistleblower stuff, just a wild coincidence. I have read the “misconfigured BGP records” elsewhere, and I believe it. The added tidbit was that it was definitely FB’s records misconfigured.Report

  6. Jaybird says:

    I do not know if this is the official explanation, but it is a good one and fits the “dumber than I imagined” requirement:

    Report

  7. Chip Daniels says:

    I heard that the Post-it with the password to their server was inadvertently thrown out.Report

  8. fillyjonk says:

    I feel like this is a “never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity” moment. The conspiracies were fun for a while but it looks like someone just did something really boneheaded.

    But yeah, this raises questions about the integration of everything and how few platforms run it. Can you *imagine* if something like smart-home tech went down for 8 hours and no one could adjust their thermostats or turn on lights?Report