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Facebook Outage Rekindles Push for a Free and Open Web

Facebook, Workplace, Instagram, and WhatsApp went down today for roughly six hours due to a Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) configuration error. Cloudflare describes BGP as “the postal service of the Internet.” It is responsible for routing Facebook’s traffic and making all of its domains accessible to visitors.

https://twitter.com/briankrebs/status/1445081561536339970

At first glance, the outage appeared to be a malicious attack following a Facebook whistleblower’s revelations on 60 Minutes Sunday evening. BGP routing can be hijacked, but so far there is no evidence to suggest that it’s anything other than an ill-timed configuration error.

“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 optimize for its own interests, like making more money,”  former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen told 60 Minutes.

Haugen copied tens of thousands of documents of internal research before leaving, one which stated: “We have evidence from a variety of sources that hate speech, divisive political speech and misinformation on Facebook and the family of apps are affecting societies around the world.”

Haugen’s interview with 60 Minutes had already made Facebook’s lack of ethical compass a hot topic at media outlets before all of its web properties went down earlier today. This outage is one of the most severe in the company’s 17-year history, due to the cascading effects of Facebook’s infrastructure being tied into so many aspects of every day life. According to The Independent, reports of problems at internet and phone companies started rolling in, as Facebook and its related apps are often confused with the internet.

The whistleblower’s evidence of the pernicious nature of Facebook’s algorithms, combined with the widespread outage of the company’s network of services, has sparked a renewed call for people and businesses to return to the open web.

These kinds of outages disrupt those who have built their communications and commerce on top of Facebook’s products. Businesses put themselves in a vulnerable place when they rely on a walled garden to deliver audience engagement, especially when that garden’s algorithms promote divisive discourse and misinformation. Business owners should take recent events as a wakeup call and revoke all the permissions given to unaccountable platforms for short-term gains. It’s time to invest in the long-term health of your online presence by building on the open web.

As good people work to expose the inner workings of companies that have abandoned principles in pursuit of profit, I am hopeful the web will right itself and applications will become more open and adept at helping people navigate these turbulent times. For those today who are remembering what it’s like to have a breath of fresh air in Facebook’s absence, challenge yourself to start creating content on your own site. Make your website the original source of your work and distribute it out to social networks where you want to extend your reach.

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Problems Blocking Rise of the Open Web

I've recently read numerous articles about bringing people back to the open web or about finding ways to grow it. This is a worthy challenge that can enable a more competitive landscape while distributing more of, well, everything.

There are three important problems that need to be solved to make the open web more successful. These three important problems that aren't getting enough attention.

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Automattic Takes on Facebook with “A Meditation on the Open Web”

Last week Automattic published a video titled “A meditation on the open web” that calls out Facebook as the antithesis of the open web:

As you get closer the air gets smoggier and you realize it’s a vast metropolis. It’s surrounded by high concrete walls, completely contained. Inside it’s bustling, lots of honking traffic, people everywhere, the sound is deafening. You see people arguing in bars and chatting on street corners. Billboards and advertisements are everywhere, touting ever kind of good and service. It’s noisy and dense and overwhelming.

This is Facebook.

The video also likens Instagram to a cookie cutter housing development that is actually just a collection of billboards with no one living there.

My expectation before playing the video was that it would enumerate the positive aspects of the open web but I was surprised to find it juxtaposed with Facebook and Instagram in a somewhat jarring fashion midway through. It effectively communicates the stark contrast between the limitations and restrictions of social media silos and the freedom of owning your own website.

Open Web Meditation was created as a design experiment at Automattic that encourages viewers to look beyond the walls of dominant social media platforms and consider how our experiences on the web differ based on where we choose to share our ideas. The company is looking to gain global exposure for the video by inviting people to create their own versions of it in their own languages.

Automattic’s video is a timely message, as the world pauses to reflect on the 30th birthday of the World Wide Web this week. In his open letter published by the Web Foundation, Tim Berners-Lee urged companies, governments, and the web’s citizens not to give up on building a better web. He identified “system design that creates perverse incentives,” where user value is sacrificed, as one of the most dangerous threats to the web at this time.

“You can’t just blame one government, one social network or the human spirit,” Berners-Lee said. “Simplistic narratives risk exhausting our energy as we chase the symptoms of these problems instead of focusing on their root causes. To get this right, we will need to come together as a global web community.”

Many commercial entities have enjoyed extraordinary and unprecedented opportunities and influence because of the creation of the world wide web. Berners-Lee underscored their responsibility toward the public as stewards of the open web.

“Companies must do more to ensure their pursuit of short-term profit is not at the expense of human rights, democracy, scientific fact or public safety,” he said. “Platforms and products must be designed with privacy, diversity and security in mind. This year, we’ve seen a number of tech employees stand up and demand better business practices. We need to encourage that spirit.”

In an interview with the BBC, Berners-Lee said that global action is required tackle the web’s “downward plunge to a dysfunctional future.” This 30-year anniversary is a good time to re-examine our complex relationships with centralized services and return to the guiding principles that have made the web a universal, open place of opportunity.