Posted on 10/09/2021 6:06:46 AM PDT by Kaslin
The impact of Monday’s internet outage spread a lot further than just Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Amazon, Amazon Web Services, Google, Google Fiber and CloudFlare; Verizon,AT&T, T-Mobile, Xfinity, Peacock, US Cellular, Cricket, Cox; Snapchat, Zoom and TikTok: These companies are among those who received massive upticks in complaints of non-working services from users frustrated with their inability to access either Facebook companies themselves, or Facebook services integrated into their sites.
Facebook says “the root cause of this outage was a faulty configuration change,” detailing the expensive disaster in a Tuesday post, but don’t get distracted: The ripple effect of this “faulty configuration change” was great enough to disrupt unrelated business around the entire planet -- and exposed the implications Big Tech failings can have on our country and its economy.
Reports of disruptions lasted hours, and taken together, give the American people a glancing peek at the raw dominion and sheer influence that a handful of megacorporations have over the various aspects of our everyday lives. Because of a “glitch,” major communication closed down, aspects of commerce and related transactions ceased, and people all over America were left wondering when the systems they use every day would be restored.
Monday’s internet outage provides a glimpse into just how much power a few companies wield; and just how vulnerable the internet -- and with it our entire economy -- are to the effects of a major player going down, be it by accident or subterfuge. A good number of these same few companies hold that same power over Americans’ political freedoms; and a large portion of those -- including Amazon Web Services, Facebook, Twitter and Google -- have shown open hostility toward those same freedoms.
Power appropriately checked can be benevolent. Big Tech’s power, however, is far from checked: Commerce and communications can literally end—either inadvertently or deliberately—in a moment; fundamental liberties can be arbitrarily extinguished by “community guidelines” or other subjective content moderation policies; and political agendas can be selectively advanced and ideological opponents, selectively punished.
Big Tech got here by trampling on free-enterprise and innovation, and, to be sure, by exploiting regulation to block out competition and shield itself against reform. It’s not entirely different today than yesteryear, when Big Oil, Big Steel, and Big Railroads had the power to exert long-unchecked influence within America’s democratic institutions.
Our elected representatives need to protect Americans from the abusive practices of monopolistic enterprises. Take, for example, Amazon, which started humbly enough as an online bookstore. Today, it controls not only the majority of online e-book and print sales, but is expected to seize 50 percent of America’s e-commerce trade this year. Amazon’s nearly ubiquitous service has changed the retail landscape with broad and unquestioned public acceptance. Through investing in cloud computing, it has aggregated web-hosting, which now, through Amazon Web Services, are responsible for over $13.5 billion each year – over half their annual revenue.
Other companies like Google and Apple followed this same pattern of mass acquisitions in their respective markets with little to no resistance from Congress and the antitrust regulators of the executive branch agencies. This dominance is a cause for tremendous concern.
Americans cannot allow Congress to overlook this unchecked power, the danger it poses. Our solutions have always been found in unfettered debate and domestic economic policies that restrains unfair trade practices, support innovation and competition, and protect intellectual property.
Rather than helplessly relying on monopolistic megacorporations, we need to become active agents—determiners of our own destinies—by building alternative structures. Only then, when we once more have actual choices, will we be able to protect ourselves, our Constitution, and our country.
“the root cause of this outage was a faulty configuration change,”
Eggs>one basket.
Personally, I will have nothing to do with ‘The Cloud’
Try to find a thermostat today that you can automate or integrate locally without ties to The Cloud.
Everything globally has big corp pushing us into the Cloud.
I have 15 year old Proliphix IP thermostats that work 100%, but all locally.
If any freeper knows of any IP thermostat that can be used without The Cloud, please tell me.
When “alternative structures” are built the megas eventually buy them and either snuff them or incorporate them in their own political universe. Their power lies in the huge cash reserves that dwarf even some countries and can buy all the upstart businesses and politicians and bureaucrats they need.
A lot of dumb configuration really. I never understood if you were logging into Pinterest, Candy Crush or some other unrelated site why you would be asked if you wanted to use your Facebook credentials? Single sign-on global capabilities to a monopoly? Very risky. Also, you can’t get into your own buildings because of a failed BGP update or routing issue? Very stupid.
Ok, good article but what are some alternatives?
I keep wanting to compare this to HAL going insane, in 2001.
For work (actually several jobs) I was forced to use Microsoft Office and Windows. Microsoft Word automatically saves your documents to the freaking cloud without asking! I lost a bunch of documents and I was just mystified and thought my PC had been hacked. Finally I found them on “onedrive.” Why do they assume the cloud is so important to people?
Now that I don’t have that job anymore I’m thinking of installing Linux on every machine. I started saving stuff that’s important onto external drives and never save anything to the PC anymore, LOL.
Oddly, I survived it with little disruption in my life.
Weinberg’s Law
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
Didn’t notice...
What you say is true but there’s a movement to bring us freedom:
Follow Jeffrey Peterson on Telegram
https://t.me/jeffrey_peterson
and also JPs Technology Chat:
Rebuilding our cyber world using Linux in phones, computers, servers, cloud.
“The root of this cause was a faulty configuration change”
Yeh sure. 😆
“Americans cannot allow Congress to overlook this unchecked power, the danger it poses ...”
Unless that power serves the government currently in charge. Which of course it does. Don’t expect any antitrust initiatives while the the Dems are in control.
Blah, blah, blah, yada yada yada blather signifying nothing except the guy got paid for putting electrons on the web
How difficult is it to avoid internet use altogether? Not difficult for a single individual with the requesite will power. The problem is that his neighbors are party to a system that could easily crash the power grid and/or every financial institution.
By the way, the founder of Craigslist told the Tech Punk Oligarchs to stuff it years ago. Craigslist is free from their influence.
Long term, the Sherman Antitrust Act needs to be brought against the Tech Punk Oligarchs to the tune of trillions of dollars, bankrupt them, throw them on the ash heap of notorious history.
Well, go check out these simplified samples:
All the IP addresses and ports are hard-coded. Furthermore, since the test system will have different addresses than the production system, there is no way to test them in advance.
I’m sure the actual files FB used had thousands of hard-coded IP addresses, ports, and commands. You’d better be sure you never make any mistakes!
England wrote:
“Personally, I will have nothing to do with ‘The Cloud’
Try to find a thermostat today that you can automate or integrate locally without ties to The Cloud.
Everything globally has big corp pushing us into the Cloud.
I have 15 year old Proliphix IP thermostats that work 100%, but all locally.
If any freeper knows of any IP thermostat that can be used without The Cloud, please tell me.”
I had a new A/C system installed a couple years ago and it came with Honeywell Pro Series wired thermostats.
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