Under Construction

Two billion WhatsApp users affected and 100 billion messages that could not be sent, 175 million of those messages belonging to business accounts, are some of the results of the outage at WhatsApp, the largest virtual messaging system.

In addition, 2.74 billion people lost access to Facebook and another 1.22 billion people lost access to Instagram, two of the most utilized social networks in the world.

This stoppage of the three applications owned by Facebook, Inc., created by Mark Zuckerberg, demonstrates that, in spite of technological development of unimaginable proportions, its function is still vulnerable to errors that produce serious consequences, like the confusion that happened yesterday in world communications.

Social media has changed life for humanity and and plays an ever more fundamental role in globalization, but at the same time this has meant dependence. A glitch can have major impact on activities on the planet.

Although there are other platforms on the internet that fulfill a similar function to the three disrupted applications, it is still worrisome that technology, which has offered so many solutions and generated dramatic changes, is still vulnerable to risks that can paralyze communication.

Yesterday’s crisis demonstrates that the digital world is a marvel that is not yet done with being invented.