This morning.
Sorrento, Italy.
A holidaying RollingNews founder Eamonn Farrell writes:
‘The day after Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger went down for over six hours, costing owner Mark Zuckerberg billions of dollars, a large private yacht arrived in Sorrento, with waiters from the city’s hotels proclaiming that Zuckerberg was on board. At the moment we are unable to verify if this is true.’
Anyone?
Earlier: Soz
Facebook Chief Executive Officer and founder Mark Zuckerberg in Dublin in 2019
This morning.
Via Mashable:
In an oddly short update on its engineering blog, Facebook explained the root cause of the outage that saw half the world suddenly post memes on Twitter, and the other half realize WhatsApp (another Facebook service that was down) isn’t a good backup for Messenger.
“Our engineering teams have learned that configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centers caused issues that interrupted this communication. This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centers communicate, bringing our services to a halt,” the post said.
The outage also had an effect on the company’s internal systems, which is why it took so long to fix it, Facebook said.
Meanwhile..
The timing of the outage was somewhat suspicious, given that it happened right after a whistleblower went public with damning info on how Facebook handles misinformation on its platform. However, Facebook is adamant that the root cause of the outage is the misconfiguration issue detailed above.
Finally, Facebook said it has no evidence that user data was compromised as a result of this downtime.
Facebook apologizes for that massive outage, says no user data was compromised (Mashable)
This morning.
Kildare Street, Dublin 2.
A fake Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg outside Leinster House this morning calling on TDs to ‘Correct the Record’, part of a worldwide campaign disinformation on the social media giant.
Meanwhile…
Today.
In the Seanad.
Fine Gael TD Hildergarde Naughton (second pic above) is charing a hearing of the International Grand Committee of Fake News and Disinformation.
The committee will hear from a number of senior executives from Google, Facebook and Twitter and the Data Protection Commissioner.
Experts speaking to the committee this morning included (from top) Ben Nimmo, Senior Fellow for Information Defense at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab; Carole Cadwalladr, British author and investigative journalist; Roger McNamee, investor and author; and Karlin Lillington, columnist at The Irish Times.
The committee hearings can be watched live in link above.
This afternoon.
Merrion Street, Dublin 2
CIA actor Facebook Chief Executive Officer and founder Mark Zuckerberg (with former UK Liberal Party Leader Nick Clegg above left)) outside Government Buildings on his way to meet members of the Oireachtas Communications Committee.
The committee wish to raise a number of concerns with Mr Zuckerberg including; the regulation of social media, transparency in political advertising and the ‘safety of young people and vulnerable adults’.
He’s so cool.
Meanwhile…
— Frances Conlon (@Conlon57) April 2, 2019
Update:
This afternoon.
Members of the Oireachtas Communications Committee, top from left: Fine Gael’s Hildegarde Naughton, Green Party Eamon Ryan and Fianna Fáil’s James Lawless taking to the media outside the Merrion Hotel after meeting Mr Zuckerberg.
Earlier: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Mark Zuckerberg, of Facebook; Fine Gael TD Hildegarde Naughton
One of the three TDs (@1Hildegarde) to meet Mark Zuckerberg today says she wants passports or PPS numbers to be required by Facebook from now on, as a way to battle under-13s using it.
— Adrian Weckler (@adrianweckler) April 2, 2019
Ms Naughton also told @TodaySOR that eye-scanning might be a way for Facebook to tell what age you are, thus granting you access.
— Adrian Weckler (@adrianweckler) April 2, 2019
Um.
Previously: He Will Be Among Us
UPDATE:
I will be meeting Mark Zuckerberg shortly making the case for EU regulation for oversight of social media rather than self-regulation. As the European HQ for so many international tech companies Ireland has a responsibility to get it right. statement: https://t.co/WrZO5KeugR pic.twitter.com/6OzzsSTRfO
— Eamon Ryan (@EamonRyan) April 2, 2019
UPDATE:
Amazing – Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook who rejected the invitation to meet MPs at the House of Commons, has now agreed to meet TDs (MPs) in the Parliament of the Republic of Ireland in Dublin!
— Lord John Kilclooney (@KilclooneyJohn) April 2, 2019
Mark Zuckerburg writes:
I’m proud to share that Facebook’s sixth data center is now under construction in Clonee, [Co. Meath] Ireland. This will be our second European data center, after Luleå in Sweden.
Data centers deliver all of Facebook’s services to you. They’re some of the most complex machines ever created.
Clonee Data Center will be one of the most advanced and energy efficient data centers in the world. It will feature the latest server, storage and network designs developed through the Open Compute Project, and will be powered by 100% renewable energy.
One interesting engineering detail is that we’re cooling the facility with outdoor air, but because this is near the Irish Sea we’ll be using an indirect air cooling process to filter the salt from the air.
We’re glad to be investing in Ireland, to become a part of the Clonee community, and to continue building the massive infrastructure that connects our global community.
Zuckerberg shows off plans for Irish Facebook data centre (Silicon Republic)
Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and chief executive of Facebook, announced on Tuesday that he and his wife would give 99 percent of their Facebook shares “during our lives” —holdings currently worth $45 billion — to charitable purposes.
Mark Zuckerberg And Wife pledge 99% of their Facebook shares to Charity (New York Times)
(Pic: NY Times, Facebook, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)
(H/T: Oisín)
The thing of it is that [Mark] Zuckerberg (above) did in fact succeed at selling [$16bn of stock at a $104bn valuation]. Yes, the stock isn’t worth that much anymore. But that just goes to show that after maximizing his control over Facebook and thumbing his nose at the Wall Street game he nonetheless managed to hustle Wall Street for maximum money. Sure underwriters like a nice post-IPO “pop” that lets them reward key clients, but for people making the initial sales an anti-pop is ideal. It means no money was left on the table. Or, rather, it means that negative money was left on the table. And why should he care what happens here on out?
Jonathan Darby writes:
Upon venturing on to Facebook last night… after a few beers it must be said… I decided to rail on Mr Zuckerburg for not sharing out the IPO profits. My account was temporarily suspended as a result. I’ve since been able to log in again, but with the Facebook…violated policies welcome…
