Facebook is back from its outage, but how does everyone feel about the tech players?

Facebook is back, but how do people feel about the harsh reality of the leading tech company’s holds on its users.  

60% of Americans aware of the issues missed Facebook the most

This past Monday, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp experienced some significant issues in their platform, leaving many users stranded and confused. Many individuals started by questioning their phone or internet connection, although all platforms eventually made statements about their system malfunctions, beginning with WhatsApp as the first account. As speculation grew throughout the day, many grew concerned for the seriousness of this failure.  

Savanta decided to poll social media users on their experience during the ‘blackout’ on Monday and how they felt affected going forward with the tech companies. Of all social media users, 23% of Americans were unaware of the issue, with 73% saying they were aware of the situation. Although many were affected by the problems, only 16% of Americans cared deeply about the tech failures—22% aware of the outage but didn’t care about the issue.  

When all three apps were down, certain apps felt more frustrating to be out of than others. 60% of Americans aware of the issues missed Facebook the most, and 29% said they missed Instagram the most when it was down. Only 11% of Americans aware of the problems missed WhatsApp the most. As we move to being a more digital society, there are plenty of businesses and entrepreneurs that were directly affected by the outage. Especially with Facebook and Instagram down, many small businesses struggled to keep in touch with customers, proceed with business transactions, and keep up with their professional developments. As a cause of the problems on all platforms, business owners were faced with a hard start to their work week.  

In evaluating more generally the ongoing solution, a bigger question that arose was whether or not huge companies like Facebook, should be owning multiple social media platforms as a cause of such a mass blackout across different industries. With this, 55% Americans believe that Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp should not be owned by the same company.