Right now, meanwhile, that spread has been brought to an abrupt halt with this unexpected downtime.Facebook is starting to come back online gradually after crashing for nearly seven hours today.įacebook, WhatsApp and Instagram crashed earlier today for desktop, mobile phone and app users worldwide. 'We continue to make significant improvements to tackle the spread of misinformation and harmful content,' spokesperson Lena Pietsch said. Haugen also suggested that Facebook had lied to the public about just how much it was doing to prevent fake news and hate speech.įacebook, meanwhile, argued that the allegations were unfounded, and countered that interpretation of the studies.

Younger users like teenage girls faced exacerbated body image issues, it's suggested, while Facebook's role in exaggerating the vaccine divide has also been highlighted. Whistleblower Frances Haugen – who previously worked as a product manager on the civic misinformation team at Facebook – appeared on '60 Minutes' this weekend to discuss why she downloaded a huge cache of internal research and distributed it to law enforcement agencies in the US.Īmong the data are internal studies carried out by Facebook's own researchers, which – Haugen and others say – point to an awareness at the company that many people are negatively impacted by their time on the site, and apps like Instagram. For Facebook, though, the downtime comes as the site faces strong pushback for just how healthy it is for many of its users.

How long will the whatsapp outage last