Facebook on Monday began restoring access to its platform as well as to Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger after a global outage lasting about six hours shut out many of its 2.7 billion users, left some of the company’s employees idle and prompted a public apology.
"Facebook services coming back online now - may take some time to get to 100 per cent," its chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer said in a tweet. "To every small and large business, family, and individual who depends on us, I'm sorry."
The error-reporting website Downdetector showed the services first stopped working around 11:45am Eastern Time (7:40pm in the UAE). Across the globe, users of Facebook and its sister sites were unable to load content or were greeted with error messages.
Facebook and its affiliated apps began to return online for some users about 5:45pm ET, around six hours after the incident began.
"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's spokesman, Andy Stone, said in a tweet.
It was one of the longest failures in recent memory. Downdetector, which monitors internet problems, said the Facebook outage is the largest it has seen, with more than 14 million reports worldwide.
The disruption came a day after a whistleblower accused Facebook of repeatedly prioritising profit over clamping down on hate speech and misinformation.
Several users logging in to third-party apps such as Pokemon Go and Match Mastersusing using their Facebook credentials to were also facing issues.
Facebook staff, who usually communicate using software developed in-house, were reportedly forced to use Zoom and Discord as they scrambled to identify the cause of the problem.
The outage also left staff unable to access buildings and conference rooms at the company's offices after their electronic entry keys stopped working, the New York Times reported, citing an internal memo.
The memo also revealed a team of employees was dispatched to a California data centre to attempt to manually restart the social media company's servers.
"Given the level of back-ups, regional co-location servers, the Facebook FNA node network, their data centre fabric, their neural-network fabric interconnecting data centre and machine learnings applications – this kind of global outage should, in 2021, be inconceivable — or at least lasting minutes," Neil Campling, co-head of Mirabaud Securities' Global Thematic Group, told The National.
Why did Facebook go down?
Facebook blamed a "faulty configuration change" for the issues in a post on Tuesday morning from its vice president of infrastructure.
Posting on Facebook, Santosh Janardhan said sorry for the outage and blamed “configuration changes on the backbone routers that co-ordinate network traffic between our data centres”.
He said: “To all the people and businesses around the world who depend on us, we are sorry for the inconvenience caused by today’s outage across our platforms.
“We’ve been working as hard as we can to restore access and our systems are now back up and running. The underlying cause of this outage also impacted many of the internal tools and systems we use in our day-to-day operations, complicating our attempts to quickly diagnose and resolve the problem.
"Our engineering teams have learned that configuration changes on the backbone routers that co-ordinate network traffic between our data centres caused issues that interrupted this communication. This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centres communicate, bringing our services to a halt.”
During the outage, security experts had identified a configuration change as a more likely cause than an outside hack. A massive denial-of-service attack that could overwhelm one of the world's most popular sites would require either co-ordination among powerful criminal groups or a very innovative technique.
Facebook has previously been coy about the causes of its service interruptions, which affect three of the world’s most-used apps.
In 2019, after most of its services were inaccessible for almost 24 hours in the worst disruption it has faced, the company blamed a “server configuration change” for a “cascading series of issues”.
Facebook also experienced widespread outages with its apps in March and July this year.
Facebook shares suffered their worst day in nearly a year, closing at $326.31 on Monday, down 4.87 per cent for the day amid a broad sell-off of tech stocks.
The revelations have ignited a firestorm for Facebook in Washington as politicians accuse the company of covering up internal research about its negative effects.
Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project, said the huge impact of Monday's outage was the "perfect illustration" of the problem with giving one company monopolistic control over much of the world's digital communication.
"Especially in developing nations, where Facebook is the gateway to the internet, and where WhatsApp serves as the primary communication method for hundreds of millions, Facebook's overwhelming power was on full display through its absence," Ms Paul told The National.
The users of dozens of smartphone models will be unable to use WhatsApp from November 1, when the Facebook-owned platform will stop working on phones that run on systems older than Android OS 4.1, Apple’s iOS 10 and KaiOS 2.5.1, according to its FAQ section.
Which smartphones will no longer support WhatsApp after November 1?
iPhone 6s. Photo: Apple
iPhone 6s Plus. Photo: Apple
Samsung Galaxy Trend Lite. Photo: Samsung
Galaxy S2. Photo: Samsung
Samsung Galaxy S III Mini. Photo: Samsung
GALAXY Xcover 2. Photo: Samsung
GALAXY Ace 2. Photo: Samsung
Samsung Galaxy Core. Photo: Samsung
LG Lucid 2. Photo: LG
LG Optimus L3 II Dual. Photo: LG
LG Optimus F7. Photo: LG
LG Optimus L7 II. Photo: LG
ZTE Grand S Flex. Photo: ZTE
Huawei Ascend G740. Photo: Huawei
Huawei Ascend D Quad XL. Photo: Huawei
Huawei Ascend D2. Photo: Huawei
Sony Xperia Miro. Photo: Sony
Wiko Darknight. Photo: Wiko
HTC Desire 500. Photo: HTC
RESULTS
5pm: Maiden (PA) Dh80,000 1,400m
Winner: JAP Almahfuz, Fernando Jara (jockey), Irfan Ellahi (trainer).
5.30pm: Handicap (PA) Dh90,000 1,400m
Winner: AF Momtaz, Antonio Fresu, Musabah Al Muhairi.
6pm: Handicap (TB) Dh100,000 1,400m
Winner: Yaalail, Fernando Jara, Ali Rashid Al Raihe.
6.30pm: Abu Dhabi Championship Listed (PA) Dh180,000 1,600m
Winner: Ihtesham, Szczepan Mazur, Ibrahim Al Hadhrami.
7pm: Wathba Stallions Cup Handicap (PA) Dh70,000 1,600m
Winner: Dahess D’Arabie, Fernando Jara, Helal Al Alawi.
7.30pm: Maiden (PA) Dh80,000 2.200m
Winner: Ezz Al Rawasi, Connor Beasley, Helal Al Alawi.
Nov 04-05: v Western Australia XI, Perth
Nov 08-11: v Cricket Australia XI, Adelaide
Nov 15-18 v Cricket Australia XI, Townsville (d/n)
Nov 23-27: 1ST TEST v AUSTRALIA, Brisbane
Dec 02-06: 2ND TEST v AUSTRALIA, Adelaide (d/n)
Dec 09-10: v Cricket Australia XI, Perth
Dec 14-18: 3RD TEST v AUSTRALIA, Perth
Dec 26-30 4TH TEST v AUSTRALIA, Melbourne
Jan 04-08: 5TH TEST v AUSTRALIA, Sydney
Note: d/n = day/night
The BIO:
He became the first Emirati to climb Mount Everest in 2011, from the south section in Nepal
He ascended Mount Everest the next year from the more treacherous north Tibetan side
By 2015, he had completed the Explorers Grand Slam
Last year, he conquered K2, the world’s second-highest mountain located on the Pakistan-Chinese border
He carries dried camel meat, dried dates and a wheat mixture for the final summit push
His new goal is to climb 14 peaks that are more than 8,000 metres above sea level
Cape Town Sevens on Saturday and Sunday:Pools A – South Africa, Kenya, France, Russia; B – New Zealand, Australia, Spain, United States; C – England, Scotland, Argentina, Uganda; D – Fiji, Samoa, Canada, Wales
HSBC World Sevens Series standing after first leg in Dubai 1 South Africa; 2 New Zealand; 3 England; 4 Fiji; 5 Australia; 6 Samoa; 7 Kenya; 8 Scotland; 9 France; 10 Spain; 11 Argentina; 12 Canada; 13 Wales; 14 Uganda; 15 United States; 16 Russia
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
How to wear a kandura
Dos
Wear the right fabric for the right season and occasion
Always ask for the dress code if you don’t know
Wear a white kandura, white ghutra / shemagh (headwear) and black shoes for work
Wear 100 per cent cotton under the kandura as most fabrics are polyester
Don’ts
Wear hamdania for work, always wear a ghutra and agal
Buy a kandura only based on how it feels; ask questions about the fabric and understand what you are buying
Starring: Ahmed El Sakka, Amir Karara, Ghada Adel and Moustafa Mohammed
Three stars
The biog
From: Upper Egypt
Age: 78
Family: a daughter in Egypt; a son in Dubai and his wife, Nabila
Favourite Abu Dhabi activity: walking near to Emirates Palace
Favourite building in Abu Dhabi: Emirates Palace
Results
2.30pm: Dubai Creek Tower – Handicap (PA) Dh40,000 (Dirt) 1,200m; Winner: Marmara Xm, Gary Sanchez (jockey), Abdelkhir Adam (trainer)
3pm: Al Yasmeen – Maiden (PA) Dh40,000 (D) 1,700m; Winner: AS Hajez, Jesus Rosales, Khalifa Al Neyadi
3.30pm: Al Ferdous – Maiden (PA) Dh40,000 (D) 1,700m; Winner: Soukainah, Sebastien Martino, Jean-Claude Pecout
4pm: The Crown Prince Of Sharjah – Prestige (PA) Dh200,000 (D) 1,200m; Winner: AF Thayer, Ray Dawson, Ernst Oertel
4.30pm: Sheikh Ahmed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Cup – Handicap (TB) Dh200,000 (D) 2,000m; Winner: George Villiers, Antonio Fresu, Bhupat Seemar
5pm: Palma Spring – Handicap (PA) Dh40,000 (D) 2,000m; Winner: Es Abu Mousa, Antonio Fresu, Abubakar Daud
Du Football Champions
The fourth season of du Football Champions was launched at Gitex on Wednesday alongside the Middle East’s first sports-tech scouting platform.“du Talents”, which enables aspiring footballers to upload their profiles and highlights reels and communicate directly with coaches, is designed to extend the reach of the programme, which has already attracted more than 21,500 players in its first three years.
