The world was rocked for a hot minute this week when Facebook went dark. At first, I thought it was an issue with my phone, but when I checked on my laptop, it wasn’t there either. Was I booted off the internet? No, that was working. Channeling Mama Troll from Frozen, I wondered, “what’s the issue, dear?”
As NPR explained, “An update to Facebook’s routers that coordinate network traffic went wrong, sending a wave of disruptions rippling through its systems. As a result, all things Facebook were effectively shut down, worldwide.” Imagine being the staff member who had to tell Mark Zuckerberg, especially since “the outage also whacked Facebook’s own internal systems and tools that it relies on for daily operations.”
Facebook explained the outage, indicating it was caused by “configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centers,” apparently connected to an issue with the Border Gateway Protocol. Kind of like what’s been happing at the southern border of the U.S.
I chuckled at the reports that some Facebook employees couldn’t get into conference rooms and the space where the routers are because their systems are all connected. “Um, boss, I’d fix the problem but my key card isn’t working.” Kind of like Facebook jail, when the offender wants to explain but can’t get anyone to listen to them because they’ve been unfairly booted from the site. Karma, anyone?
And rumor has it that poor Mark lost six billion dollars in net worth on Monday – or was it seven billion? I lose a twenty dollar bill and I’m bummed out for days. It sounds like a new book in Judith Viorst’s series is in order: “Zuckerberg and His Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Week.” Not much sympathy here, I’m afraid.
The complaints were fierce, the Twitter jokes even fiercer. I’m guessing some small businesses will even try to sue, as they lost potential sales on FB Marketplace for six hours. But that may not work out too well, because bottom line, Facebook allows us to access all this marvelous content for free! Yes, I know ads pop up from time to time, convincing us that Facebook has spies in our bedroom, and they’re mining our data, whatever that means, but I don’t pay a subscription fee for Facebook or Instagram. So if they have a bad day, who am I to complain? You get what you pay for, right?
What am I willing to pay for? The question is coming up quite often these days, as a click on a FB post leadx to a brick wall, a message that says, “subscriber only.” For a while, it was mostly on newspaper sites, a bait and switch that whets our appetite for a story of interest, only to tell us we need a subscription to the New York Times or the East Podunk weekly to read any further. I get it. Journalists have to eat too. If only the bulk of that money was going to journalists instead of hedge funds.
But now that model is creeping over to some of my favorite writers, who will tease with a social media post that provides a hint of content and then leads to a paywall. Again, I don’t begrudge their need to make money from their work, especially if the money can go in their pockets instead of into a corporation’s, but if I purchased the number of Substack subscriptions I really want, I’d be broke. The business model in media is changing, and it’s killing me.
I’ve whined for years about paying for four hundred channels on cable television when I only watch five, but that was a bargain before Hulu, Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, and Peacock came on the scene. Sure, I could subscribe for two months to watch something I really want to see, but those subscriptions renew automatically, and, like the Columbia Record club of my teen years, the records will just keep coming unless I remember to cancel.
Now it’s happening in journalism and other forms of writing too. Join my exclusive club for $5 or $10 a month, and you can have access to a special podcast, a longform essay, a prayer of the week, an extended warranty or maybe even a swatch of the Shroud of Turin. I exaggerate, but you get my drift.
I have great sympathy for my fellow writers. Unless you’re Stephen King or Danielle Steele, book contracts are tough to get, and pay for freelance journalists is less than we can make at McDonalds, so I can’t fault anyone for trying to monetize their work. Yet today’s trend is already limiting access to vital voices that bring words to life, and those with limited resources are left out of those exchanges. Not sure what the answers are, but for today, I’m grateful for the platform of Facebook, and the social security check that allows me to write without starving.
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