The capitalist dream is to own the world, Facebook is pretty damn close. Facebook owns two social media platforms, three messaging services, a popular gaming platform, and a smorgasbord of other products. But what happens when all of those products s**t the bed?
For many, it's pure chaos. Even a small outlet like ours was affected by yesterday’s outage with a hit to social traffic. But for communities intrinsically tied around one of the world’s biggest companies? Essentially, it's digital Armageddon. (Not the Michael Bay movie.)
What happens when Facebook fails?
Outside of the first world, smaller countries are heavily reliant on Facebook services. After the outage yesterday, many came forward on Twitter to explain how integral to life the company's WhatsApp service is.
WhatsApp, a free text messaging service, is used heavily in countries like Brazil. One Twitter user explained that small businesses are built on WhatsApp connectivity. The service has replaced traditional text messaging to the point where they don't store phone numbers locally. When WhatsApp dies for six hours, a business shuts down. In the worst-case scenario, a country stalls for the day.
For most of us, Facebook’s fall was a comedic moment. Oculus’ became useless paperweights; old Facebook users were terrified of this newfangled Twitter; Instagram users had to learn shapes other than squares. However, those who have built their communities around that billions-of-dollars Facebook promise plunged into despair.
Read More: AI researchers are "creating God", says scared former Google executive
They're not ready for a Metaverse
The idea of a Facebook metaverse is already a terrifying idea, so much so that industry professionals are speaking out against it. However, yesterday revealed the company's utter ineptitude, proving fully that this massive company shouldn't ever be given control of everyone.
Facebook's failures yesterday were so bad that the entirety of Facebook was gone. Employee emails were non-existent, employee badges didn't give them access to the building to fix the outage, 1.5 billion users’ data was leaked. I couldn't look at Doug the Pug on Instagram, and I couldn't be arsed to see if he's on Twitter.
The metaverse that Facebook wants to create would see everything — work, play, shopping, social interactions — go through them. Them! The company that couldn't let employees through the door. Outside of its shady child-preying, politically meddling, news manipulating crap its always pulling, now Facebook may just not work somedays.
One company can't do it all. It's impossible. And that's not just about Facebook. For example, Amazon can't launch an MMO properly despite owing more servers than sense. As mega-corporations continue to expand, fingers get jabbed into even more pies, and it takes just one bad day to turn it all into s**t-crumble.
Read More: Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin described as "lazy" and obsessed with SpaceX, claims leaked documents
Explore new topics and discover content that's right for you!
News