What happened to Facebook?

All of Facebook’s services were affected, not just Facebook. It included Facebook’s own internal systems, with reports staff were locked out of offices, and could not access their own internal communications platform. To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we're sorry.

Is Facebook in a crisis?

Facebook was already in the throes of a separate major crisis after whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, provided The Wall Street Journal with internal documents that exposed the company’s awareness of harms caused by its products and decisions.

Does Facebook run everything through Facebook?

As the Guardian’s UK technology editor, Alex Hern, put it on Twitter, “Facebook runs EVERYTHING through Facebook”, so the usual way you would fix a problem like this was also not working.

How has Facebook impacted the world?

But the impact was far worse for multitudes of Facebook’s nearly 3 billion users, showing just how much the world has come to rely on it and its properties — to run businesses, connect with online communities, log on to multiple other websites and even order food.