Facebook, Instagram hit by global outage, Zuckerberg loses $7 billion

Mark Zuckerberg lost nearly $7 billion as Facebook’s apps, which include Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, were down on Monday (4 October) night. In just a few hours, his position in the list of the richest people in the world dropped from fifth to sixth, below Bill Gates.

Based on the Standard Media Index, Facebook is estimated to lose $545,000 per hour during the disruption. Facebook stocks also fell about 5%. 

The disruption occurred in various Asian, European, Latin American and North American countries. Many other apps and services also use Facebook for log in, so the disruption led to unexpected domino effects, such as people couldn’t login to shopping websites or their smart TV.

The disruption lasted over five hours. Facebook said the cause was changes to its underlying Internet infrastructure that coordinates the traffic between its data centre — not of a hack or attempt to get user data.

Facebook managed to restore its services after a team got access to its server computers at a data centre in Santa Clara, Calif. Facebook’s apps began to recover on Tuesday (5 October). The company said that the disruption didn’t impact any user data.

“Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger are coming back online now. Sorry for the disruption today, I know how much you rely on our services to stay connected with the people you care about,” said Zuckerberg in a Facebook post.

The disruption of Facebook’s apps came a day before whistleblower Frances Haugen was set to testify before the Congress about her experience at the company. Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, provided internal Facebook documents to Wall Street Journal. She told 60 Minutes on 3 October that Facebook prioritised profits over safety.