Why Facebook Collapsed.

hey everyone me kevin here my goodness

facebook has had a wild ride in this

video we're going to talk a little bit

about what may have gone wrong and could

it happen again so first it's worth

noting that this morning around 11 40

eastern time according to the new york

times

facebook instagram oculus messenger

whatsapp employee services like emails

and cell phone services related to

facebook all started having issues or

just completely going down around 11 40

a.m eastern time again per the new york

times now some folks are now going nuts

on twitter tweeting things all over that

facebook being down is a great way to

end political divisiveness end world

hunger and create world of peace the

library of los angeles is tweeting that

real books are still working and others

are suggesting they had no idea how much

they used instagram or facebook until it

went down

so

this isn't even to mention the fact that

now there are millions of people who use

sign in with facebook to check out on

purchases or to to just log into certain

websites or accounts that they can't

access when facebook goes down so the

issues of this approximately five hour

plus outage have been a disaster for

individuals with businesses losing

millions of dollars worth of revenue and

a lot of very upset and confused people

wondering what's happening is facebook

doing something did facebook get hacked

is did facebook screw up what is

happening here and we finally have a

little bit of insight into what may have

created this largest internet outage for

facebook since the 2019 outage which

affected some sites for about 24 hours

keep in mind a lot of facebook websites

still at the time of this recording are

still having issues though they are

slowly coming back online so here's what

we got right now it looks like it is

unlikely some form of a cyber attack or

a hack that's because usually cyber

attacks or hacks don't damage and shut

down so many different things at once

it's probably more of a server

communication issue and we're going to

talk about what it potentially could be

at least what experts believe it could

be right now and it has to do with this

weird thing called the border gateway

protocol and this is sometimes referred

to as the postal service of the internet

except nobody's actually running that

postal service it works almost like a

crypto network

where different nodes

about 64 000 of them called autonomous

systems throughout the world communicate

dns data so that way the internet can

function in kind of a decentralized way

it's kind of like

decentralized

finance before there was decentralized

uh finance it's decentralized internet

so an easy way to think about this is

just by the mail analogy so let's say

you're gonna mail something okay let's

say this piece of paper towel here is an

envelope and we're going to mail this

we're going to ship this the postal

service determines the quickest route

for sending this letter or package to

reach its destination so let's say it's

gonna go from here

to uh florida uh then to the bahamas and

then to germany right because i'm trying

to send this to germany well would it be

faster for it to go from california to

new york and then to germany i don't

know but this sort of decentralized

space makes that determination and so

when somebody submits data on the

internet you're kind of sending a parcel

it's kind of like sending data one way

you send data and you receive data right

send receive that's how the internet

functions so you and for example if you

like go to google and you submit a query

on google you are sending a request and

then you receive a return for data so

it's a two-way system so a nice slow

easy way to think about it just mail i

send a letter to germany eventually i

get a letter back hopefully from germany

well when someone submits data on the

internet the p

g p again the border gateway protocol

determines the quickest route for this

data to go and it usually results in

data traveling across multiple nodes

which again very eerily similar to

cryptocurrency and how it works travels

across multiple nodes to get there kind

of like i mentioned steps in florida

then bahamas right stops at multiple

nodes known as autonomous systems and

this is kind of like going to different

branches to get to its destination in

the mail example well autonomous systems

are what the internet is made up of

we'll just call them ases for now asses

are really just a large pool of routers

that are run by individual organizations

all across the world and there's no

centralized organization that runs all

of the nodes these could be companies

they could be internet service providers

they could be governments they could be

inter universities there are about 64

000 of these nodes throughout the world

and it's kind of like how there are

probably hundreds of thousands of post

offices throughout the world you got to

go through these different nodes and

checkpoints and distribution centers to

get your mail where it needs to go and

the internet though is very very

complicated it changes a lot new systems

and new rules come and go and so these

nodes have to keep up with changes and

the way these nodes keep up with changes

is uh unlike post offices the uh these

as are not unified by one company

there's no like usps sometimes they're

even competitors against each other and

so sometimes you get some asses changing

data which or changing rules so to speak

which is supposed to update data at

various different nodes as as they all

tell their neighbors hey we're now going

to direct traffic in this way we're now

going to operate in this way and it can

lead to some really funky uh odd changes

that happen so uh for example in 2008

just to give you an example because i

think by example this makes much more

sense in 2008 a pakistani internet

service provider tried to block users

from visiting youtube so what they did

is they went through the border network

uh protocol and or border gateway

protocol

and

said hey nobody's allowed to go to

youtube anymore through our nodes well

that information spread from the

pakistani nodes to nodes really

throughout the world and all of a sudden

nobody was able to access youtube for a

period of time in 2008 uh because this

this node change got advertised

everywhere and it didn't just update in

the pakistani nodes it updated

everywhere and they're all like okay

sounds good nobody's going to youtube

kind of crazy now that was an accident

most of the time these aren't actually

hacks these are just accidents like

here's here's one though where you did

have a hack in 2018 amazon was attacked

and hijackers created a bgp route so

like an update for those nodes saying

hey anytime we get traffic for this

certain thing

redirect customers over here and uh by

doing so these hackers were able to

steal over a hundred thousand dollars of

cryptocurrency by redirecting amazon

traffic to themselves by hijacking these

nodes

so uh now like what do you do in the

future and are we still vulnerable for

issues like this

yeah

we are and what can we do nobody knows

in fact facebook still hasn't actually

come out and given an official statement

on this so right now this is still

speculation and i'm doing my best to

understand it as well so if you have a

if you have sort of a an additional

commentary in terms of how i explain

this you can help educate the audience a

little more leave me a comment down

below i want to hear your perspective on

this as well this is my understanding of

it but there's been talk about updating

the bgp system to make it more secure

and more resilient to attacks however

remember that requires all of the

automated systems to simultaneously

update their behavior throughout the

world and the 64 000 of them at least so

unless we get everyone to agree to

basically shut down the internet and

turn it back on kind of like doing a

hard fork in cryptocurrency we're

probably gonna have to keep dealing with

uh these bgp sort of problems or even

sometimes hacks or hijacks and uh yeah

it's gonna be something that yeah it

will be will make the internet very very

sensitive and we're definitely

vulnerable to massive attacks and more

outages like this in the future

obviously and hopefully we can prevent

them but yeah this gives you a little

bit of insight into what the heck

happened at facebook today and uh can it

happen again heck yeah is it an easy fix

no is it probably facebook's fault it's

probably somebody's fault somebody

screwed something up with trying to

update a single node which then

broadcast to everyone regarding facebook

so it's probably somebody's fault but

the way the system is designed makes it

very easy to take a fault kind of like a

cancer cell and replicate it throughout

the entire system very quickly anyway if

you found this helpful consider

subscribing and folks see in the next

one thanks

[Music]

you