Facebook was hit by a worldwide outage after its services went offline for seven hours disrupting access for users and businesses around the world.
This comes after Facebook ex-worker Frances Haugen turned over to authorities and the Wall Street Journal accusing the company of putting profit over safety
The company apoligized for the outage, which affected its platforms and apps including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger.
“We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now,” the company said.
Facebook said the problem was due to networking issues.
However, cyber security experts noted they had found signs that online routes that lead people to the social giant were disrupted.
The outage cut off communications between Facebook’s data centers, leading to a cascade of disruptions as servers were cut off with each other, Facebook said.
Internal systems were also hit, making it hard for the company’s engineers to diagnose and fix the problem, the company said.
User data wasn’t compromised, according to the company.
In addition to the disruption to people, businesses and others that rely on the company’s tools took a financial hit.
Haugen, 37, came forward on Sunday as the whistleblower behind a series of damaging reports in the Wall Street Journal that have heaped further political pressure on the tech giant.
Haugen told the news program 60 Minutes that Facebook’s priority was making money over doing what was good for the public.
“The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimise for its own interests, like making more money,” she said.
Haugen is expected to tell lawmakers that Facebook faces little oversight, and will urge Congress to take action. “As long as Facebook is operating in the dark, it is accountable to no one. And it will continue to make choices that go against the common good,” she wrote in her written testimony.
Fortune’s billionaire tracking website late yesterday said Zuckerberg’s personal fortune plunged by nearly $6 billion from the prior day to land at just under $117 billion.
