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The Facebook Outage Shows Why It Should Be Broken Up
Just one reason among many for antitrust legislation
The outage on Facebook’s servers was unexpected and lengthy. But it was also an eye-opener to just how much we rely on one company for providing the services we use every day on the internet.
Everyone knows Facebook, but you might not be aware the company also owns Instagram and WhatsApp. If you weren’t aware of this fact, you were when the outage resulted in all three apps being unavailable for hours.
The outage was eventually resolved and normal service resumed but the wider point is how reliant we’ve become on Facebook without even realising it.
An outage on the servers of one company caused mayhem across the internet. The usual means of communication were interrupted and we were left to contemplate what life was like pre-internet.
Want to get in touch with someone? How about a text message or even a call?Sounds very much like the early 2000s rather than 2021.
What the outage revealed about Facebook was what many people have been referencing for a while now but hasn’t reached a mainstream audience. That Facebook is a monopoly and should be broken up.
