Meta Mayhem and Social Media Blackouts

“Is Instagram down?” you type furiously on Twitter or WhatsApp, and chances are, if you’re asking that question, the answer is probably a resounding “yes”. In its many years of being a functioning platform, Instagram is kind of known for crashing. It’s not the ideal legacy, but don’t worry, they’re working hard to make sure it doesn’t happen again (or so we’re told every three months).

March 05th 2024 marked this year’s first, and hopefully only, Meta outage. According to downdetector.com, during the peak of the outage, there were over 550,000 complaints of Facebook disruptions and approximately 92,000 for Instagram. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone mentioned in a post on X that a technical issue caused problems for users accessing some of their services earlier that day. However, he did not provide any further information about the issue.

The worldwide outage prompted Elon Musk, owner of rival social media platform X (formerly Twitter), to seize the opportunity to troll Meta. Musk, known for his internet meme-based humour, shared a meme on X mocking the outage of Meta apps while highlighting X’s stability — and I’m no fan of Musk, but honestly, well deserved. From Musk’s X handle:

X CEO Linda Yaccarino also joined in the banter, jokingly suggesting that Meta users were checking if Instagram and Facebook were down by switching to X. She emphasized that everything was functioning smoothly on X’s side. During the Meta outage, X witnessed a surge in user activity, with a 40% increase in app opens and a 23% increase in impressions compared to the average, as reported by @XNews.

One thing that always stands out to me about these social media outages is that people who generally tend to blame the platforms for their lack of productivity do not take advantage of the blackouts – instead, they’ll be using every platform that is available to ask about the status of the one that isn’t. We’re all guilty let’s be honest. Very few people will say, “Ah! Finally an Instagram outage. Now I can work in peace.” Mostly, it’s just a series of colourful swears carefully strung together and lovingly delivered to Mr. Zuckerberg. Oh, well.

Though the outage lasted only a couple of hours, that’s days in the world of social media. At the end of the day, we’re all avid Internet users, and it only took about ten minutes for the conspiracy theorists to hop on. Some suspected malicious cyber activity, whereas others suggested it might have something to do with the US election process. However, as Pakistanis, most of us were just worried that the government had finally decided to part ways with social media on behalf of the entire country’s population. Glad that we were wrong.

It’s very easy to joke about, but our dependence on social media is alarming, and our unified refusal to address it as such is even more so. Perhaps the Meta outage was a blessing in disguise – a fleeting glimpse into the fragility of our digital existence and the resilience of the human spirit.

About the Author: With chai and Google Docs as trusted companions, Abrish Nayyar has honed the art of weaving stories, fueled by late-night inspiration and the mundane world. Aspiring to one day be a published author, to her, every article is an inch closer to that goal.