Billions of Facebook users affected as internet giant experiences long outage

CALGARY -

Internet behemoth Facebook experienced a massive outage Monday, taking Instagram, Messenger and What'sApp offline with it.

The outage lasted from mid-morning until just before 5 p.m. MT, when the services started to come back online.

The outage highlights a problem with concentrated ownership of social media platforms, says one computing professor.

"There appears to be these different services," says Randy Connolly, who teaches at Mount Royal University.

"But they're all the same big giant thing. And if something goes wrong with that giant thing, it's a real concern for more than just people using one of these (services)."

The problem appears to be self-inflicted. The outage affected the connection with the company's DNS or Domain Name System servers. DNS acts something like a phone book, with users typing in the name of the site they are re trying to reach, and the system then translates that to a numeric IP address. Essentially, those phone numbers, or IP addresses, - were not available Monday.

The disruption came during a tough week for the company. A whistleblower is scheduled to testify before the American Congress on Tuesday.

Among the expected testimony is that Facebook has tried to hide evidence about the extent to which its platforms have been used to spread misinformation and hate.

Facebook says it employs thousands of people to help control the problem.