Facebook is down - time to move to Matrix

As a result of a Facebook employee making a small BGP mistake, Facebook's entire infrastructure is down: Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are all no longer accessible for a while.

According to Jeff Geerling as told in the video below, the problem goes even further where Facebook employees cannot even enter Facebook buildings as a result of the keycards being connected to Facebook's infrastructure, making solving the issues even more difficult.

Why move to Matrix?

As the platform claims on their website, Matrix' decentralised nature allows for no single points of failure. No single Matrix employee could disrupt or even block the entire network's communication for any amount of time.

Matrix works in federated servers: everyone has the option (and is encouraged) to create their own server and add it to the Matrix network. That way, if one server goes down, all the other servers are still available for online business.

The example below shows how a centralized service like Facebook has an obvious server node that would cancel all communication if it were to gain issues, (like as of the time of writing the article) whereas no such point exists in a decentralized service like Matrix.

How do I move to Matrix?

Install either Element or FluffyChat on your phone. Either app is fine, and they're both connected to the Matrix network. Choose a homeserver like matrix.org, chat.privacytools.io or chat.weho.st and you'll be good to go. Both apps respect your privacy, have end-to-end encryption by default and allow you to connect to whomever you want.

If you have any questions, you can always contact me on Matrix, Discord or Telegram, as they're all connected to my Matrix account.

This is the perfect moment to #deletefacebook. And if you're still hesitating, read up more on interoperability, decentralization and other rights.