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news Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp All Down - "caused by a DNS (domain name server) fail"

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"Global users are experiencing outages on Facebook, including all social networks the company owns, which include Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. When navigating to these websites, a server error will appear — Instagram shows a “5xx server error,” which indicates that this is an issue with Facebook’s servers. Users are also unable to send messages or load new content on the mobile apps for these platforms. Even Oculus, Facebook’s virtual reality platform, is experiencing outages, according to a tweet the platform posted.

It appears that the outage is caused by a DNS (domain name server) fail — this is the naming structure that forms the web’s infrastructure. So, if you try to navigate to facebook.com right now, the internet won’t know where to find facebook.com."

Full Article: https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/04/facebook-messenger-instagram-whatsapp-are-all-down/
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
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@iTesla Starting my own one: Feetbook. The only problem is I think it may attract the wrong people
 
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https://domainnamewire.com/2021/10/05/rely-on-facebook/

The real reason you shouldn’t rely on Facebook (or any other social network) for your sole web presence is that Facebook acts as a middleman between your customers and you. Your business is the product when you create a Facebook page. Facebook will only show your posts to a subset of your customers, and it wants you to pay to reach the rest.
 
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Most people that use Cloudflare proxy their DNS entries through their service, so you never end up knowing the IP address you're actually hitting because they perform the request for you. This is how they provide protection to you using their network.

They probably have a similar setup at Facebook provided by another supplier or themselves.

This has the added bonus that if you change a DNS entry at Cloudflare it will take effect immediately instead of having to wait for the DNS TTL because they channel you to your back end.

Question: If this stops working properly is it a DNS problem? I guess not DNS in its purest sense, because there's other stuff going on, but it's still doing the same job...

DNS and http proxy are 2 different things.
In most cases, at least 1 or all nameservers are standalone different servers from http servers. Heavy traffic sites run even emails, ftp and databases on different servers.
In most cases DNS queries are not tracked at all. Even if you run your own nameserver -it's very easy to setup a nameserver and have it run- there is almost no point to record the hits to a nameserver, unless you sell DNS hosting and price the packages based on number of hits.

I mean DNS queries are not recorded by the nameservers in most cases. Because by default DNS and nameservers are the most secure part of the internet. For instance, a cheap server with weak processing power can handle extremely high DNS traffic, but the same server may not handle 10 wordpress websites. The work on dns are too easy and requires a little processing power.
 
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Would do the world a favour if they never came back on line again imo.
I would love to just see the reactions of influencers if all redirected to another project.
 
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It will be php8 upgrade and will go down again as a guess.
 
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I wrote the way how you can completely bypass DNS.
If the issue is on DNS, the method I wrote above solves it perfectly.
It's a well known solution in Linux World.

If the webserver is running on the same IP in your hosts file, you can always access that server without DNS. But if the webserver (http server) is down, you can never browse those websites.

What you say worked about 20 years ago when sites were hosted on about one dedicated server with one IP; not so much now when major sites are vast and have multiple IPs.

There's also not really much point in it, since it's far more likely a major site will change its IP address (from the one saved in your hosts file) than have a major outage related to DNS, which is a rarity that's usually the fault of your DNS server and/or your ISP.

You may as well just keep a text file with IPs of sites and paste them into the browser manually if you really can't live without the internet for a few minutes or an hour.

The real/best use of a hosts file is to block ads, malware and other sites you don't like by setting their IP at 0.0.0.0, as in this site:

https://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

I've been using that for more than 20 years and it's the first thing I and anyone else should do after installing an operating system. The second thing is using a non-Google, non-Cloudflare and non-ISP DNS server.

Other hosts file block lists also exist, including this one which I just found in a quick search and don't use myself (though think I might once I've looked into what they block), which is apparently updated daily and contains 500,000+ "bad" sites:

https://github.com/Ultimate-Hosts-Blacklist/Ultimate.Hosts.Blacklist

Anyone not blocking ads/js/tracking either by hosts or some other method is crazy of course. The internet is a garbage dump without it.
 
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For many Facebook is a great marketing tool, I see this on small companies without webpage bars/restaurants etc it's cheaper than making a website.
 
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https://domainnamewire.com/2021/10/05/rely-on-facebook/

The real reason you shouldn’t rely on Facebook (or any other social network) for your sole web presence is that Facebook acts as a middleman between your customers and you. Your business is the product when you create a Facebook page. Facebook will only show your posts to a subset of your customers, and it wants you to pay to reach the rest.

The problem is getting people to your website not just once but on a regular basis. If you are paying to reach them, then they can see your page's call to action while scrolling through pictures of food their family and friends ate, or someone airing their dirty laundry or perhaps vaguebooking.
 
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For many Facebook is a great marketing tool, I see this on small companies without webpage bars/restaurants etc it's cheaper than making a website.
My space was first and is now not your space. Plenty learnt then to get own site.
 
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The problem is getting people to your website not just once but on a regular basis. If you are paying to reach them, then they can see your page's call to action while scrolling through pictures of food their family and friends ate, or someone airing their dirty laundry or perhaps vaguebooking.

Have own website. Run FB ads if they help.

Lot of people reviews food places on google too for free.
 
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