Facebook Explains Users Being Logged Out | 22 Words

Yesterday, millions of Facebook users across the globe found that their session had 'expired' and they were logged out of the social media giant.

But why? Well... now Facebook has released a statement with the apparent reason for the log out.

Keep scrolling to learn more.

Facebook is really the original social media giant.

Founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2004, it is considered one of the Big Four media giants alongside Amazon, Apple, and Google.

For a long time, it dominated the internet.

In the early '00s, pretty much everyone was a Facebook addict, spending hours writing on one another's walls and "poking" each other.

The founding of the platform has become something of a legend.

The 2010 biographical drama movie, The Social Network, told the story of how the company was founded by Harvard student, Mark Zuckerberg. The movie starred Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Armie Hammer, and Justin Timberlake.

Over the years, Zuckerberg has proven himself to be a shrewd businessman.

And one of the areas in which the Facebook empire has truly excelled in is through clever choices of acquisitions.

In April of 2012, Facebook acquired Instagram.

The purchase cost one billion dollars and was one of the most expensive social media spends to date. But it's clear that it paid dividends, as Instagram has only grown in popularity since 2012.

And that wasn't their only smart buy.

In 2014, Facebook acquired chat platform, WhatsApp, for a whopping nineteen billion dollars. Woah. 

But there's something weird about this trio of platforms.

For the most part, it seems as though most of us tend to forget that the three are even connected. At least until the server goes down and they all crash at once, that is.

But, in recent years, Facebook has really gone downhill.

What used to be a trendy app filled with college students and other young, cool people is now almost exclusively populated by older generations who can't quite get the hang of the internet.

Which has led to one thing.

It seems that almost no one actually uses Facebook as a social networking platform anymore and tend to rely on other methods to communicate with their friends.

But while Facebook itself is one in decline ...

Other social media platforms are getting more and more popular by the day. And these include Facebook-owned platforms, Instagram and Whatsapp.

And it's clear that this has been worrying Zuckerberg.

Sure, he owns an absolute ton of tech companies. But Facebook will always be his baby, right?

So he decided to make a pretty weird move.

In order to make sure that his Facebook brand never dies, Zuckerberg has decided to use what he has: two of the most popular and fastest-growing social media platforms out there.

Although some are concerned about his decision.

Because it seems as though it may not be led by good sense, and, instead, is an emotional reaction by Zuckerberg to the decline of Facebook.

The renaming is pretty clunky.

Rather than actually changing the names of Instagram or WhatsApp, Zuckerberg is, instead, adding a suffix. His addition of choice? "From Facebook."

Some suspect that there's a specific reason for the change.

They believe that Facebook is hoping to utilize its sister companies, Instagram and Whatsapp, as a means of gaining some cool points.

But we're concerned about something.

Adding "from Facebook" to these snappy and recognizably-named apps just seems to reflect the mistakes that Zuckerberg made when naming Facebook in the beginning - overcomplicating things.

However, it doesn't seem to have impacted him too much...

via: Getty Images

As the Bloomberg Billionaires Index has made a huge announcement not too long ago.

Zuckerberg is a centibillionaire.

via: Getty Images

 This means his fortune has surpassed 100 billion dollars.

He joins the ranks of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates.

via: Getty Images

 It's a truly mindboggling amount of wealth.

The news follows Zuckerberg's announcement that he's launching a rival to TikTok.

via: Getty Images

The TikTok alternative is Instagram Reels.

And despite only dropping a few months back, Reels have already proved to be highly popular.

via: Getty Images

People can't get enough of them.

There are 2.7 billion Facebook users.

And yesterday, many around the world noticed that they'd been logged out of the social media giant.

People had no idea why.

When they got a message to say their session had expired and they had been logged out.

Many thought there had been a hack.

But now Facebook has finally revealed that the log out was down to a 'configuration change'.

They tweeted:

So Facebook, heard it was a "configuration change". Thanks to the engineers who fixed the issue and patiently tried to explain the cause to us to no avail.

So there you have it folks.