Did you know Facebook was down? Well, I didn't! It's not only that I am that rarely on Facebook but moreover seems like I'm living on another planet, maybe even some another galaxy or at least in some different parallel universe.

The thing is that I experienced some difficulties with WhatsApp (missed calls, several hours delayed messages arrival, etc.). I'm using WhatsApp regularly to talk and exchange messages with my younger son who is living abroad. But I thought it's just another crazy bug and app glitch or maybe even I really didn't hear the call or the sound of the message arrival.

I also peripherally noticed, as I still have some old notification program or app set on my PC (which I mainly ignore) that the last few days I kinda wasn't that much bugged and annoyed with those notifications. Of course, this still didn't ring the bells for me. Why should it be? I wasn't bothered by someone's profile picture being changed, newly uploaded photo or shared some third party post.

Yesterday late afternoon or early evening I noticed the return of those notifications with extreme intensity. Over a sudden, there was a whole bunch of a new friend's suggestions and a horde of uploads, shares, and stats changes of my current Facebook friends. It still didn't ring my bells! I thought they all went crazy most likely because of the atmospheric conditions and sudden weather changes (almost overnight for over 10°C or even 15°C) from cold to hot.

Today I received an entirely different topic newsletter inside which Facebook's outage has been mentioned what made me curious enough to Google it and see what's going on.

Not only Facebook! - Instagram and WhatsApp too!

Oh my, oh my! What did I find there? - Tons of articles and videos posted just in the last three days about the event. I still didn't research deep and wide enough to be sure what was real reason and cause of the Facebook downtime, but without any doubt, it was huge and quite unpleasant (for some even highly costly) that impacted many.

As far as I understood the whole thing started two days ago on March 13, 2019. Although there are some claims about how it was only 2 to 3 hours long outage, it seems that for some users around the world it's still down.

Some users also reported how they could log in but are not being able to post, message or make any changes on their accounts. In other words, Facebook's main interaction and engaging functionalities are out, and users can only come and read or watch what is already there, without the possibility to like/dislike, comment, share or else.

Great! Am I surprised? - Not really!

For me, it has never been IF something like that would happen but only WHEN it's going to happen. I was always convinced that it's just a matter of time, nothing else.

Don't keep all your eggs in one basket!

Not wanting to be some bad times prophet or even less being some conspiracy theory fan or advocate, I still can't get rid of the feeling that this is just a beginning and only a tip of an iceberg!
As always, time will show!

Way more important, I would like to draw your attention onto the following.

My older son was always teasing me because on one side, through time, I gained a lot of computer and Internet knowledge and skills, quite significantly above my generation, that even they (my kids) who are more or less the children of the digital era still asking my advice for many things.

On the other side, he didn't understand, as he called it, my old-fashioned stubbornness and sticking to some old methods which appeared to him just like some unnecessary "detour," double work, and above all waste of time. I would say, he likes more the easy or even lazy shortcuts.

The things I'm talking about, for example, are making hard copies of important things or not using commonly offered shortcut registrations or logins through Facebook, Google or similar, or at least not using it as the only afterward available option.

It turns out that those last few days when Facebook was down, as well as its associated apps Instagram and Whatsapp, along the way goes all those sites and apps people were using Facebook to sign in to. And that's a huge and most horrifying part!

Therefore, I want to alert, remind or encourage you to keep in mind such unwanted outcomes (no matter, how unlikely it may seem to happen to you at some point) and be prepared!

• Make hard copies of all the important things to you!
• Make your own backups (accessible offline)!
• Use at least two different registration/signup and log-in options (whenever it's possible)!

And last but not least...

Don't keep all your eggs in one basket, and especially not in someone else's basket!

---

P.S.
If you check current stats at DownDetector.com, you would see that Facebook in the last 24 hours is still dealing with some issues.

Posted on Friday, March 15, 2019

---