Meta Platforms, the company behind social media apps Facebook and Instagram, has announced that services have been restored after an outage that affected thousands of users. At one point, nearly 20,000 users reported having trouble accessing Facebook and Instagram, as well as Meta’s messaging service WhatsApp. Downdetector.com, an outage-tracking website, reported that outage numbers had come down to less than 500 by 6:30 pm ET (4:00 am IST, Saturday).
Meta responded to the outage by posting on Twitter that it was working to fix the issue. The company said, “We know some of you might be experiencing issues with our apps today. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your patience.” Downdetector tracks outages by collecting status reports from several sources, including user-submitted errors on its platform. Although the outage may have affected a larger number of users, it was not global. In India, Facebook and Instagram were working fine for most users.
Meta Rolls Back COVID Misinformation Policy
In other news, Meta has recently rolled back a policy that was put in place to curb the spread of COVID-19 misinformation on Facebook and Instagram. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter came under immense pressure to tackle misinformation related to the pandemic, including false claims about vaccines, prompting them to take stringent measures.
The Facebook parent company sought the opinion of its independent oversight board in July of last year on changes to its current approach, given the improvement in authentic sources of information and general awareness around COVID. However, Meta has now decided to roll back the policy, stating that the improvement in authentic sources of information has rendered the policy unnecessary.
Although the policy had good intentions, it faced criticism from some who felt that it was too restrictive and that it could limit free speech. Meta’s decision to roll back the policy has been met with mixed reactions, with some praising the move as a step in the right direction for free speech, while others are concerned that it could lead to an increase in misinformation on the platform.
Meta Platforms has restored services after an outage that affected thousands of users. The outage affected Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, but outage numbers have since come down. Additionally, Meta has rolled back a policy aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19 misinformation on Facebook and Instagram. While this move has been praised by some as a step towards free speech, others are concerned that it could lead to an increase in misinformation on the platform.
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