/newsroom/taxonomy/term/10176/all en /newsroom/channels/news/expert-facebook-instagram-and-whatsapp-back-online-after-global-outage-333966 <p>Facebook and Facebook-owned apps Instagram and WhatsApp were up and running again late Monday after being hit by an outage that affected users around the world. The social media giant said the disruption to network traffic "had a cascading effect on the way our data centres communicate, bringing our services to a halt." It said there is no evidence that user data was comprised. It was the largest such outage ever tracked by the web monitoring group Downdetector, which collates complaints about web outages.</p> Wed, 06 Oct 2021 16:04:59 +0000 frederique.mazerolle@mcgill.ca 278398 at /newsroom /newsroom/samuel-veissiere Wed, 01 Apr 2020 02:36:33 +0000 shirley.cardenas@mcgill.ca 205829 at /newsroom /newsroom/channels/news/were-not-addicted-smartphones-were-addicted-social-interaction-284522 <p>We all know people who, seemingly incapable of living without the bright screen of their phone for more than a few minutes, are constantly texting and checking out what friends are up to on social media.</p> <p>These are examples of what many consider to be the antisocial behaviour brought on by smartphone addiction, a phenomenon that has garnered media attention in the past few months and led  investors and consumers to demand that tech giants address this problem.</p> <p>But what if we were looking at things the wrong way? Could smartphone addiction be hyper-social, not anti-social?</p> Tue, 06 Feb 2018 16:43:51 +0000 justin.dupuis@mcgill.ca 32937 at /newsroom