Facebook crash exposes risks in social networking products

The networking problem brought down services used by more than 2.75 billion people just as a United States whistle-blower’s testimony threatened to attract more unwanted scrutiny.

Facebook Inc.’s worldwide crash exposed the risks of relying on its social networking products, bolstering European regulators’ drive to contain its reach just as a U.S. whistle-blower’s testimony threatens to attract more unwanted scrutiny at home.

While Europe awoke to find Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger services back online, the scale of Monday’s blackout quickly led to criticism. The European Union’s antitrust chief and digital czar, Margrethe Vestager, said the Facebook failure would focus minds on the company’s dominance.

“It’s always important that people have alternatives and choices. This is why we work on keeping digital markets fair and contestable,” Vestager said. “An outage as we have seen shows that it’s never good to rely only on a few big players, whoever they are.”