Blackout on Facebook was due to "faulty configuration change"

The company has ensured that there is still no evidence that user data has been compromised.

Social network Facebook said that "the main cause of the outage was a faulty configuration change".

The company indicated on Monday night that there was still "no evidence that user data was compromised as a result" of the outage, a flaw that prevented users from accessing Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger for about seven o'clock.

"People and companies around the world depend on us to stay connected. We apologize to those affected," the group said.

The personal wealth of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has dropped by more than six billion dollars (about 5.2 billion euros), after several problems were registered in the main platforms of the technology company.

According to financial information agency Bloomberg, Mark Zuckerberg has moved down a notch on the list of the world's most at risk due to the global outage that affected Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.

On Monday, a sell-off led to a 4.9% decline in the tech giant's shares, adding to a drop of around 15% since mid-September.

The fall in shares on Monday led to a drop in Mark Zuckerberg's value to $121.6 billion (about €105 billion), trailing Microsoft founder Bill Gates in fifth place. in the Bloomberg Billionaires index.

According to the same index, in September, Mark Zuckerberg recorded 140 billion dollars (about 121 billion euros).

On September 13, The Wall Street Journal began publishing a series of stories based on internal documents from the social network, showing that Facebook was aware of the problems caused by its products, such as the harm of Instagram to the mental health of teenagers and the disinformation about the attack on the United States Capitol.

The reports, which Facebook put down in public, caught the attention of congressmen and, on Monday, a former employee of the company said she had reported the case to the press.

In response, Facebook stressed that its platform's problems, including political polarization, are not just caused by technology.

"I think it comforts people to assume that there must be a technological or technical explanation for the issues of political polarization in the US," said Nick Clegg, vice president of global affairs at Facebook, on the American television network CNN.

The stoppage registered on the company's social networks did not only affect Mark Zuckerberg.

In a "rough estimate", the non-governmental organization NetBlocks, which focuses on cybersecurity, calculated that the global economy is losing 160 million dollars (about 138 million euros) due to decreased revenue from Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp.

The world economy lost more than 950 million dollars (about 819 million euros) following more than six hours of technical problems at Mark Zuckerberg's company.

In Portugal, the problems with the platforms began to be felt around 16:30 (Lisbon time) on Monday, having been resolved at 23:00.