Facebook’s main apps suffered a widespread outage for at least six hours on Monday, cutting off access for people around the world to some of the internet’s most widely used services.
The worst disruption to hit the social networking company for more than two years brought a wave of criticism online, and came as Facebook was already facing a backlash over claims from a whistleblower that the company had deliberately turned a blind eye to the spread of disinformation and other adverse effects from its network.
Frances Haugen, a product manager who left the company earlier this year, was due to testify at a Senate hearing on Tuesday. She plans to urge lawmakers to regulate the social media group more tightly, likening it to tobacco companies who hid the dangers of smoking, opioid makers, and carmakers before seat belts became mandatory, according to written remarks.