Massive outage that's left Facebook's entire 'family of apps' down for more than EIGHT HOURS exposes the hidden tags the firm uses to label your photos on its main site and Instagram
- Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp were hit by an outage around 8 a.m. ET
- Users all around the world have been unable to see or upload images or Stories
- Instead of photos, the sites have been showing tags it uses to label your posts
A glitch affecting Facebook’s suite of apps has inadvertently provided its users some transparency on how its machine learning system sorts your content.
Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp were hit by an outage around 9 a.m. ET that primarily seems to affect photos, including uploads, Stories, and posts in the News Feed.
And, in lieu of pictures, the sites have been showing the associated image tags.
The blip essentially means you get a glimpse at exactly how Facebook sees your life, down to your hobbies, pets, and scenic snaps.
A glitch affecting Facebook’s suite of apps has inadvertently provided its users some transparency on how its machine learning system sorts your content. These labels come as part of Facebook’s push to be more accessible to users with visual impairments
Both Instagram and Facebook have been displaying image tags all day since the outage hit early Wednesday morning.
This is based solely on its object recognition system, meaning the labels are assigned whether or not you’ve added your own description.
In many cases, the machine learning tool appears spot on.
For this reporter, both Facebook and Instagram’s tags paint a picture of a user who mostly posts ‘outdoor, water and nature,’ ‘plant and food,’ and ‘cat’ pictures, along with shots including ‘one or more people.’
Most tags appear accurate at a glance (though it apparently struggles to differentiate between cats and ferrets).
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Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp were hit by an outage around 8 a.m. ET that primarily seems to affect photos, including uploads, Stories, and posts in the News Feed. Pictured: Outage map for worldwide Instagram outage reports
In lieu of pictures, the sites have been showing the associated image tags. The blip essentially means you get a glimpse at exactly how Facebook sees your life, down to your hobbies, pets, and scenic snaps
These labels come as part of Facebook’s push to be more accessible to users with visual impairments. It first introduced its AI tool to describe photos back in 2016.
While many of these tags appear straightforward, some users have expressed surprise upon learning that the site is labelling their content in such detail.
Both Instagram and Facebook have been displaying image tags all day since the outage hit early Wednesday morning
For now, however, users will be stuck looking at the labels until photos are up and running again.
As of 4:30 p.m. ET, the apps were still experiencing problems all around the world.
Facebook addressed the issue shortly after noon, about three hours after the outage struck, but has provided little detail on exactly what went wrong.
‘We’re aware that some people are having trouble uploading or sending images, videos and other files on our apps,’ Facebook tweeted on Wednesday.
‘We're sorry for the trouble and are working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible.’
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