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Facebook and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms are back online after a massive global outage plunged the services and the businesses and people who rely on them into chaos for hours.

Facebook said late Monday that 鈥渢he root cause of this outage was a faulty configuration change鈥� and that there is 鈥渘o evidence that user data was compromised as a result鈥� of the outage.

The company apologized and said it is working to understand more about the cause, which began around 11:40 a.m. Eastern Monday.

Facebook was already in the throes of a separate major crisis after whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, provided The Wall Street Journal with internal documents that exposed the company鈥檚 awareness of harms caused by its products and decisions. Ms. Haugen went public on CBS鈥檚 鈥�60 Minutes鈥� program Sunday and is scheduled to testify before a Senate subcommittee Tuesday.

Ms. Haugen had also anonymously filed complaints with federal law enforcement alleging Facebook鈥檚 own research shows how it magnifies hate and misinformation and leads to increased polarization. It also showed that the company was aware that Instagram can harm teenage girls鈥� mental health.

The Journal鈥檚 stories, called 鈥淭he Facebook Files,鈥� painted a picture of a company focused on growth and its own interests over the public good. Facebook has tried to play down their impact. Nick Clegg, the company鈥檚 vice president of policy and public affairs, wrote to Facebook employees in a memo Friday that 鈥渟ocial media has had a big impact on society in recent years, and Facebook is often a place where much of this debate plays out.鈥�

The outage didn鈥檛 exactly bolster Facebook鈥檚 argument that its size and clout provide important benefits for the world. London-based internet monitoring firm Netblocks noted that the company鈥檚 plans to integrate the technology behind its platforms 鈥� announced in 2019 鈥� had raised concerns about the risks of such a move. While such centralization 鈥済ives the company a unified view of users鈥� internet usage habits,鈥� Netblocks said, it also makes the services vulnerable to single points of failure.

鈥淭his is epic,鈥� said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis for Kentik Inc, a network monitoring and intelligence company. The last major internet outage, which knocked many of the world鈥檚 top websites offline in June, lasted less than an hour. The stricken content-delivery company in that case, Fastly, blamed a software bug triggered by a customer who changed a setting.

For hours, Facebook鈥檚 only public comment was a tweet in which it acknowledged that 鈥渟ome people are having trouble accessing [the] Facebook app鈥� and said it was working on restoring access. Regarding the internal failures, Instagram head Adam Mosseri tweeted that it feels like a 鈥渟now day.鈥�

Mike Schroepfer, Facebook鈥檚 outgoing chief technology officer, later tweeted 鈥渟incere apologies.鈥�

In Monday night鈥檚 statement, Facebook blamed changes on routers that coordinate network traffic between data centers. The company said the changes interrupted the communication, which had 鈥渁 cascading effect on the way our data centers communicate, bringing our services to a halt.鈥�

There was no evidence as of Monday afternoon that malicious activity was involved. Matthew Prince, CEO of the internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare, tweeted that 鈥渘othing we鈥檙e seeing related to the Facebook services outage suggests it was an attack.鈥�

Facebook did not respond to messages for comment about the attack or the possibility of malicious activity.

While much of Facebook鈥檚 workforce is still working remotely, there were reports that employees at work on the company鈥檚 Menlo Park, California, campus had trouble entering buildings because the outage had rendered their security badges useless.

But the impact was far worse for multitudes of Facebook鈥檚 nearly 3 billion users, showing just how much the world has come to rely on it and its properties 鈥� to run businesses, connect with online communities, log on to multiple other websites, and even order food.

It also showed that despite the presence of Twitter, Telegram, Signal, TikTok, Snapchat, and a bevy of other platforms, nothing can easily replace the social network that over the past 17 years has effectively evolved into critical infrastructure. The outage came the same day Facebook asked a federal judge that a revised antitrust complaint against it by the Federal Trade Commission be dismissed because it faces vigorous competition from other services.

There are certainly other online services for posting selfies, connecting with fans or reaching out to elected officials 鈥� but those who rely on Facebook to run their business or communicate with friends and family in far-flung places saw this as little consolation.

Kendall Ross, owner of a knitwear brand called Knit That in Oklahoma City, said she has 32,000 followers on her Instagram business page @id.knit.that. Almost all of her website traffic comes directly from Instagram. She posted a product photo about an hour before Instagram went out. She said she tends to sell about two hand-knit pieces after posting a product photo for about $300 to $400.

鈥淭he outage today is frustrating financially,鈥� she said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 also a huge awakening that social media controls so much of my success in business.鈥�

So many people are reliant on Facebook, WhatsApp, or Instagram as primary modes of communication that losing access for so long can make them vulnerable to criminals taking advantage of the outage, said Rachel Tobac, a hacker and CEO of SocialProof Security.

鈥淭hey don鈥檛 know how to contact the people in their lives without it,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e more susceptible to social engineering because they鈥檙e so desperate to communicate.鈥� Ms. Tobac said during previous outages, some people have received emails promising to restore their social media account by clicking on a malicious link that can expose their personal data.

Jake Williams, chief technical officer of the cybersecurity firm BreachQuest, said that while foul play cannot be completely ruled out, chances were good that the outage is 鈥渁n operational issue鈥� caused by human error.

鈥淲hat it boils down to: running a LARGE, even by internet standards, distributed system is very hard, even for the very best,鈥� tweeted Columbia University computer scientist Steven Bellovin.

Twitter, meanwhile, chimed in from the company鈥檚 main account on its service, posting 鈥渉ello literally everyone鈥� as jokes and memes about the Facebook outage flooded the platform. Later, as an unverified screenshot suggesting that the facebook.com address was for sale circulated, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted, 鈥渉ow much?鈥�

This story was reported by The Associated Press.