Member-only story
Facebook: A Historic Shutdown
Yesterday we Americans experienced what was mostly an annoyance. We could not post or read our Facebook feed. If you are addicted to social media, it was more than just an annoyance. For me my only concern is that some of my Facebook “friends” rely on some of us posting emergency information. They have no other social media, so that could be a problem.
Yes, they could subscribe to the County, and likely they should. Yes, they could follow many of the emergency services on Twitter, but they only stick to Facebook. I am not going to blame them for it. When we ran a local newspaper we learned that Facebook and Twitter can be important during disasters. However, yesterday it was not a day to have those concerns. If anything, it was an unusually quiet day.
As annoying as this was for Americans, WhatsApp is critical for communications around the world. It never took off in the United States and Facebook has messenger, which people use. There are other messaging services as well, usually within electronic walls, such as the Apple messaging app. But if you have family around the world, you have an inkling of how critical WhatsApp is.
There are a few things this proved though.
Facebook is indeed too big. The shutdown affected billions of people around the world.