Blackout exposes outlets’ dependence on monopoly

On the afternoon of last Monday (the 4th), three communication apps went offline worldwide. It is hard to imagine anyone missed it. Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, which ranked second, third and fourth, respectively, among the most downloaded globally in April this year, stopped suddenly — and took about seven hours to come back.

The news — even on television — brought a technical explanation, which represents part of the problem. When reporters wrote or spoke about “DNS,” they offered the public an engineering justification for the outage. We ask whether such information could effectively join the individual’s understanding of how the network works.

Although the “DNS” issue, the digital address, summarizes, perhaps hastily, the reason for the problem, it is pertinent for the press to discuss the aspect of Big Tech’s responsibility in everyday life. To what extent have individuals and companies come to depend on digital services for personal relationships and business practices?

Some headlines highlighted the decline in Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune following the access problem. That fortune could be put to the test in the face of intended compensation claims. For attorney Kaique Yohan Kondraski Servo, however, “it would be hard to win against Facebook, given the fortuitous event or force majeure the platform failure resembles.”

For some, being without these programs meant being “without Internet.” With Facebook’s failure, there was an increase in complaints against phone and connection providers. Some people fiddled with the router to regain lost access.

Walled gardens

In some phone plans, access to certain platforms is not charged. Even if the customer has no credit, they can keep browsing. This is “zero-rating,” which contributed to the idea of “walled gardens.”

For the researcher in charge of UFPR’s Political Communication and Digital Democracy Research Group (Compadd), Rafael Sampaio, “a change begins to be felt from Web 2.0, when platforms start creating digital walls. People spend most of their time inside these platforms. So, if that specific network stops working, the Internet as a whole also stops, in the user’s experience.”

What risks does this perception raise? How much do we, in the communication industry, contribute to these “walled gardens” being maintained and even strengthened?