Facebook Keeps Stopping: Now We Know How Important Facebook Is in 2021

Are you aware that Facebook keeps stopping?

So many people are concerned about Facebook’s October 2021 outage that they took to Quora to ask questions like, “What has the recent outage of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp taught you?”

All three sites went down.

Facebook has been down. Again. And again. And again.

Facebook stopped for six hours on Monday, October 4th, when Facebook had its worst outage since 2008.

This report shares how the outage affected you and what you can do to get back to your normal social media lives assuming Facebook keeps stopping again.

Timeline of Facebook’s Outages

Facebook stopped for six hours on Monday, October 4, 2021.

Facebook stopped in 2019 for 14 hours and didn’t announce it was back online on Twitter for 24 hours.

Facebook stopped in 2008 when it was down for 1 day.

How Come Facebook Keeps Stopping?

Facebook says its six-hour global outage was caused by configuration changes to routers.

Facebook said on Monday that a global outage that took its services and internal communications tools offline for several hours was due to a “faulty configuration change” to its routers.

Facebook and its other platforms, Whatsapp, Instagram, and Oculus, are all back online.

The company apologized for the outage in a blog post where Facebook’s Vice President of infrastructure Santosh Janardhan said, “To all the people and businesses around the world who depend on us, we are sorry for the inconvenience caused by today’s outage across our platforms.”

Allow me to fill you in on some background information. Outraged Facebook users rushed to the MeWe social media site after the company was accused of a data breach in 2018.

MeWe rebranded as a Facebook competitor. MeWe provided all of the features of Facebook, such as networking, content uploading, and marketing possibilities, but without the risk of personal information being sold.

Following the U.S. Presidential Election in 2020, Facebook shut down conservative political groups. People rushed from Facebook to MeWe once more. When Facebook users are frustrated, they tend to migrate to MeWe. MeWe has grown by one million users each week by January of this year!

The outage on Facebook last week irritated users. It’s no surprise that other apps, such as MeWe, have gotten more attention.

In fact, a MeWe review on my website garnered three times the normal amount of traffic. Other alternative social media platforms are in desperate need of development. MeWe promotes itself as a Facebook alternative, but it shouldn’t be considered the only one.

How Are You Affected When Facebook Keeps Stopping?

There are many advantages of Facebook which makes continuing activities you are dependent on using Facebook for impossible.

If you’re one of the 1.9 billion people who use Facebook, here’s the bad news: Facebook’s outage affected you.

It is a fact that Facebook keeps stopping. How does this affect you and the future of social media?

How Facebook’s outage affects users:

On October 4, 2021, communications were halted on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp since Facebook owns the other sites. Facebook’s worth plummeted, users flocked to Twitter, MeWe, and other social media apps, and Facebook’s branding was severely hurt in part due to the combined testimony of a Facebook whistleblower Francis Haugen which occurred just days apart.

Facebook’s outage affected users worldwide. During its six-hour outage, the social network was unable to display Facebook posts.

This meant that users could no longer watch live videos and see the latest news from friends. It also meant that users couldn’t see the posts of friends who had posted since the outage began.

Since eCommerce internationally depends on Facebook, finances were crippled for six hours.

Also, you might have witnessed #FacebookDown memes that emerged on social media sites like Twitter that were still running.

Look:

Facebook down! #facebookdown pic.twitter.com/JCmuouAKMk

— Satish Acharya (@satishacharya) October 6, 2021

This Facebook Keeps Stopping meme humorously shows the benefit of the Facebook outage. Teens will spend time with their family members since they can’t spend time on Facebook.

Here is another:

Made this real quick 😏#facebookdown #twitch #twitchleak #MEMES pic.twitter.com/40FTCnuf6G

— TroubbleGum (@TroubbleGum) October 6, 2021

This Facebook Keeps Stopping meme shows that while Facebook and WhatsApp were down, Twitter and Google were still online.

Why Does Facebook Keep Stopping? FAQ

Why does Facebook keep stopping?

You have a problem when Facebook stops working. You don’t know if the problem is on your end or on Facebook’s end. You can try restarting your phone which might make the app resume working. You can also take to Twitter and search #FacebookDown. When Facebook stops working, people on Twitter report it.

Wrapping Up: Facebook Keeps Stopping

A final thought: The recent issues with Facebook show how important the social networking site is to e-commerce and communications.

People are predicting that new social media sites will develop to provide these functions so that there are Facebook alternatives. This way, if Facebook keeps stopping, new social media sites can serve the same functions as Facebook. These platforms are sorely needed since Facebook keeps stopping.

For now, all we know is that Facebook keeps stopping. We know from Facebook’s past that it will continue to cease operations.

Let your Facebook friends know so they have a backup plan for shopping and communication in case Facebook goes out of business.

I eagerly await your feedback in the space below. Was it brought to your attention that Facebook was experiencing yet another outage? What do you think about the fact that Facebook keeps stopping?

Related Reading

If you are interested in frustrations Facebook causes, you might be interested in this post about how to get out of Facebook Jail.