Facebook, WhatsApp Outage Exposes Indian Startups’ Dependence On Tech Platforms

Facebook, WhatsApp Outage Exposes Indian Startups’ Dependence On Tech Platforms

SUMMARY

On October 4, 2021, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram went offline for 6-24 hours

This impacted a large number of Indian businesses as most of the Indian SMBs, startups or even departmental stores rely on WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram for business communication and marketing in post-Covid times

A decentralised Web 3.0 is the only solution to end the monopoly of Facebook, Google and Amazon, say crypto enthusiasts and product makers

Just a day after a former Facebook employee Frances Haugen, in an interview with CBS News, busted the company’s claims regarding the measures taken against the spread of hate and fake news (she cited Facebook’s internal study that estimated action against 3-5% of hate content and about six-tenths of 1% of violence and incitement despite being the best in the world at weeding out such content), Facebook and family, including WhatsApp and Instagram, went down for a good six hours.

For some users, it amounted up to 24 hours.

Together, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp have 3.5 Bn users worldwide. Amid the outrage, Facebook shares fell by 4.9% on October 4, 2021, the biggest daily drop since November 2020.

In the meantime, users also reported that the domain name facebook.com was up for sale.

Facebook, WhatsApp And Instagram Outage: The Issue

In its blog post, Cloudflare has highlighted that Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp’s DNS names (the internet protocol to convert words like Facebook.com to a language that computers understand) stopped resolving, and their infrastructure IP addresses were unreachable.

“It was as if someone had ‘pulled the cables’ from their data centres all at once and disconnected them from the Internet,” the blog post said.

A person claiming to be from Facebook’s recovery team stated that the actual issue arose because the BGP (border gateway protocol) peering with Facebook peering routers had gone down, a likely aftereffect of the latest configuration update.

One of the reasons it took time to resolve was the post-Covid situation with fewer people at work that created a divide between people with physical access and people with knowledge to authenticate.

Image: Reddit

This was also confirmed by Santosh Janardhan, Facebook’s VP, infrastructure. “We want to make clear at this time (that) we believe the root cause of this outage was a faulty configuration change. We also have no evidence that user data was compromised as a result of this downtime,” he said in a post.

Apart from users, Facebook employees were equally affected as the social media behemoth’s internal communications platform called Workplace was down, and most of its employees could not process their daily work routines.

As the outage also impacted many internal tools and systems, it complicated attempts to diagnose and resolve the problem quickly, said Janardhan.

Lessons For Indian Startups: Do Amazon, Google And Facebook Control Them?

Most Indian startups are hugely dependent on app platforms like Google Play and Play Store and social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram for businesses, for business communications and other requirements.

In the post-Covid era, the SMBs’ dependence on WhatsApp and Facebook has increased manifold. WhatsApp business currently has over 15Mn users in India and some of the Indian startups’ founders earlier told Inc42 that over 90% of their business communications including company’s internal communications as well as external communications with consumers take place on WhatsApp only.

From developing WhatsApp chatbots or chat automation platforms for WhatsApp businesses by the likes of Haptik.ai or startups like online hotel booking platform OYO, hyperdelivery platform Dunzo, epharmacy Raksha Health (Previously Digi-prex) or fitness tech company FITTR to a departmental shop using WhatsApp as part of its core business communications, the Indian startup ecosystem has slowly but seamlessly integrated itself with the Facebook ecosystem. Now, hardly anyone is able to offer a complete suite of alternative solutions as Facebook does.

According to a product discovery platform Product Hunt, WhatsApp becoming the new Shopify as it turns into the latest platform for D2C small businesses. More than 5 Mn businesses are using WhatsApp Business, becoming an unlikely sales channel.

Even a slight disruption in the form of an outage directly impacts these startups and can cause irrecoverable damage to these startups and SMBs.

“This shutdown has shown the downside of depending on a global digital monopoly! This is a big risk for all businesses! We need to promote multiple players in this area,” said Mohandas Pai, chairman of Aarin Capital.

Although startups led by Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma have already waged war against Google for its app policies, the latest Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp outage further underlines the vulnerabilities of Indian startups and digital businesses and their total dependence on these giant platforms.

Deepak Abbot, cofounder of instant gold loan platform indiagold and former VP (products) at Paytm, told Inc42,

“It’s a reminder that when you build your business model on top of third-party platforms, your downtime depends on them. All these popular platforms should be used to augment your business. But direct access to your customer base creates long-term value.”

Decentralised Architecture Web 3.0 Is Inevitable 

“It took an event like the entire Facebook ecosystem shutting down for the day for everyone to realize the power of Web3 and decentralized Internet protocols. The days of monopolistic big tech are numbered,” — Brandon Hogg, Twitter user

Time after time, numerous investors and product marketers have pointed out the over-dependency of startups and businesses on a few platforms. To counter the monopoly of Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple, decentralisation is the only way to go forward, thinks experts.

Polkadot and Web3 Foundation founder Gavin Wood tweeted, “Kudos to @facebook for giving us a very real demonstration of why the move to a decentralised Web 3 is necessary and, indeed, inevitable.”

In a decentralised smart web, the more nodes, the more democratic and powerful the network. An SMB or a startup will not even require big data companies that monetise the stored data. Instead, they can use decentralised data storage solutions.

In support of decentralised architecture, Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase, tweeted, “Authoritarian vs Democratic → Centralized vs Decentralized. Excessively centralized will be seen as authoritarian and thus inherently undemocratic.”

Web 3.0 is inevitable, isn’t it?

You have reached your limit of free stories
Become An Inc42 Plus Member

Become a Startup Insider in 2024 with Inc42 Plus. Join our exclusive community of 10,000+ founders, investors & operators and stay ahead in India’s startup & business economy.

2 YEAR PLAN
₹19999
₹7999
₹333/Month
Unlock 60% OFF
Cancel Anytime
1 YEAR PLAN
₹9999
₹4999
₹416/Month
Unlock 50% OFF
Cancel Anytime
Already A Member?
Discover Startups & Business Models

Unleash your potential by exploring unlimited articles, trackers, and playbooks. Identify the hottest startup deals, supercharge your innovation projects, and stay updated with expert curation.

Facebook, WhatsApp Outage Exposes Indian Startups’ Dependence On Tech Platforms-Inc42 Media
How-To’s on Starting & Scaling Up

Empower yourself with comprehensive playbooks, expert analysis, and invaluable insights. Learn to validate ideas, acquire customers, secure funding, and navigate the journey to startup success.

Facebook, WhatsApp Outage Exposes Indian Startups’ Dependence On Tech Platforms-Inc42 Media
Identify Trends & New Markets

Access 75+ in-depth reports on frontier industries. Gain exclusive market intelligence, understand market landscapes, and decode emerging trends to make informed decisions.

Facebook, WhatsApp Outage Exposes Indian Startups’ Dependence On Tech Platforms-Inc42 Media
Track & Decode the Investment Landscape

Stay ahead with startup and funding trackers. Analyse investment strategies, profile successful investors, and keep track of upcoming funds, accelerators, and more.

Facebook, WhatsApp Outage Exposes Indian Startups’ Dependence On Tech Platforms-Inc42 Media
Facebook, WhatsApp Outage Exposes Indian Startups’ Dependence On Tech Platforms-Inc42 Media
You’re in Good company