Facebook’s outage is a wake-up call for businesses reliant upon it

The disruption of service came at a bad time for the network, which is facing mounting political and regulatory heat. The businesses reliant upon it must now consider their digital resilience, writes James Moore

Businesses found themselves stuck when Facebook endured a six-hour shutdown (Getty)

Phew! Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger are back online, so you can tell the world about your trip to the dentist, “like” your friend’s photos from their recent night out, share some funny memes, hawk the latest anti-vaxx conspiracy theories… maybe not in the case of the latter.

I jest, of course. Maybe I shouldn’t. The information made public by whistleblower Frances Haugen makes clear that this is really no laughing matter.

The revelations about the way the company’s algorithms work, the allegations about what it has shared with investors concerning its reach, the distribution of toxic content, the strategies employed to lure wary younger users are all deadly serious issues.