Facebook and all of its properties are all intertwined in a complex network.
During a routine maintenance, Facebook "triggered an issue" in which made it difficult for many users on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to send or upload photos, videos and other data. This left people unable to load or post anything on Facebook News Feed, view Stories on Instagram, or send messages on WhatsApp.
For those Facebook and Instagram users that were affected, some saw the apps started showing AI-generated captions of users' photographs.
These captions are basic descriptions of what's in the picture, including how many people it might include, what they're doing, basic objects, and where it was taken.
Facebook said earlier it was aware of the “partial outage” issues and was "working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible."
Facebook has been using its AI to automatically generate alternative text for users with vision impairments since 2015.
In 2017, it updated its alternative text tools to more accurately scan people's photos. With Facebook experiencing issues, these captions were shown instead of the original pictures.
The social media giant finally restored the three services after a few hours. According to DownDetector, the issue lasted for almost a day for some other users.
Facebook posted a message on its official Twitter account, saying that the “issue has since been resolved and we should be back at 100 percent for everyone. We’re sorry for any inconvenience.”
Earlier today, some people and businesses experienced trouble uploading or sending images, videos and other files on our apps. The issue has since been resolved and we should be back at 100% for everyone. We're sorry for any inconvenience.
— Facebook Business (@FBBusiness) July 3, 2019
Instagram also posted a similar message.
We’re aware that some people are having trouble uploading or sending images and videos on Instagram. We're sorry for the trouble and are working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible. #instagramdown
— Instagram (@instagram) July 3, 2019
The three services can experience down times and occasional disruptions due to the complexity of their services. The real problem is: the three are very popular.
Facebook is the largest social media on the web. Instagram is the largest photo and video-sharing app, and WhatsApp is the most popular messaging platform. Because of the billions of users these services collectively have, issues like this can literally halt most social interactions on the web.
As a result, hashstags like #instagramdown, #facebookdown and #whatsappdown became the trending topics worldwide on Twitter. They were packed with jokes and complaints about the social media disruption.
The case didn't just affect Facebook's core app, Instagram and WhatsApp, as some users also reported that they were unable to load messages on Facebook Messenger. Oculus, Facebook’s VR property, separately announced that it was experiencing “issues around downloading software.”
Twitter on the other hand, also experienced similar issue. On Wednesday, the company's support page announced that it was "having some issues with DM delivery and notifications." It affected a significantly smaller number of users.
For every minute popular online services are offline or acting strange, the inconveniences users are experiencing can make them lose a lot of money.
