Facebook and its servers - A technological heart attack

Facebook’s blackout of almost seven hours, and WhatsApp’s and Instagram’s as well, ought to make us reflect on how much our life (if not all of it, a significant part of it) relies on the servers of an American company. Which by providing almost free services, is not strictly obliged to guarantee standards of supply and upkeep for them. When there’ s a meltdown as happened on Monday, Facebook does not apologize to the users, but after one day, if you look closely, the matter is closed and claiming damages is useless. Admittedly, the fall in the stock market has been significant, estimated at six billion dollars, a kind of indirect «punishment», but we should bear in mind that Bloomberg has estimated that the overall economic loss, as a result of the sensational breakdown, was 160 million dollars for every single hour of interruption. No more or less than a «technological heart attack» in almost all the countries of the world.

And that’ s not the only problem for Mark Zuckerberg’s company. A few hours after the blackout of its social network, perhaps another even bigger problem appeared on the horizon: the data analyst Frances Haugen, a former employee of Menlo Park, appeared in a congressional hearing in order to explain how Facebook encourages disinformation and conflict, for the simple reason that this approach brings much more traffic, and therefore much more revenue (86 billion dollars last year alone). We are therefore at the beginning of a cultural and political campaign focused on the role that social networks will have in our future.

But let’s go back to the users. On Monday, many of us experienced a sense of bewilderment, partly linked to the prolonged period of pandemic that has heightened the perception of uncertainty in many aspects of our lives. It has been an interesting and disturbing anthropological experiment, the preoccupation (euphemism) of people who were forced to do without their social channels for a full evening. It is therefore undeniable, as Frances Haugen described to the senators, that some mechanisms present in social media can spark addictive behavior, in particular among young people. This is testified by several studies, and confirmed by the disorientation of millions of people three days ago. And it’ s equally impossible to deny that the reaction to the Facebook blackout hides a profound inability to detach oneself from one’ s smartphone, even before one’ s social network.

Despite the hassles that it can bring, we must admit that the sound of cell phone notifications is, to all intents and purposes, a part of our lives and very often, in the blink of an eye, it turns from a nuisance to a comforting element. The mobile phone that suddenly rings, vibrates or lights up makes us feel connected to the world, sought after and considered. It’s a feeling that tells us a lot about our hyper-connected society. But it is also true that we are now discovering how the technology of the new millennium is fragile, not just that of the web: behind its image of reliability and near infallibility, there are concerns that are similar to those of a primitive man in the forest. Maybe, in a nutshell, those few hours offline last Monday helped us understand that there is still something outside the screen and the smartphone. Perhaps someone will have discovered that life is better if enjoyed as it was a dozen years ago, when social networks - which just then were entering the European market - hadn’t yet eroded the power of the word in favor of that of the click and virtual exchange. Let’s treasure it, while waiting for the next blackout.