Whoopi Goldberg ‘Thrilled’ by Facebook Outage: ‘Kids are Killing Themselves, Pay Attention’

Whoopi Goldberg said she was “thrilled” by the massive Facebook outage, suggesting it might be time to strip the company of its power.

Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and even Oculus were all down for hours on Monday, marking one of the longest outages in parent company Facebook’s history.

To top things off, the outage occurred just days after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen accused the company of contributing to the January 6 Capitol riots and told 60 Minutes that executives “prioritize growth over safety.”

The mass outage also happened the day before Haugen testified in front of Congress regarding her claims, during which she accused the company of “generating self-harm and self-hate” to optimize profits.

The reason for the outage remains unclear to the general public, prompting Goldberg to joke that it was caused by something The View hosts said while covering the whistleblower on Monday.

“It seemed to happen right after. I’m just saying,” Goldberg joked of outage’s timing. “Does the mass hysteria that this caused prove too many people may be relying on social media?”

Sara Haines jumped in to suggest that the outage was Facebook’s way of letting you know “how much you need this service,”

“In fact, in his ‘apology,’ I guess you could call it, [Mark Zuckerberg] said, ‘Sorry for the disruption today — I know how much you rely on our services to stay connected with the people you care about,” Haines said, adding, “That’s literally like a parent saying, ‘if you don’t like your toy, let’s see how you do without it. For eight hours, we’re off the grid.”

The View guest host Alyssa Farah noted that the mass outage also raises questions on “the monopolistic nature of Facebook,” revealing that the outage affected Afghan interpreters communicating with Americans via WhatsApp as they try to get out of the country.

“I think we have to realize, Facebook goes far beyond just the old social network we know,” Farah added. “They own major industries, and businesses rely on it. I do think that’s it. That’s the hit you need.”

Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin both agreed that the company has become a monopoly, Behar saying that it is now “a destructive force around the world” while Hostin pointed to the Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit against Facebook.

“In a funny way, we don’t think of it as a worldwide problem. We don’t think of these apps as being global entities, but I’m thrilled that it went down,” Goldberg added. “I’m thrilled that it went down, and hopefully we can say here are things that you need to concentrate on when there’s stuff going on overseas. You know, let’s work to get our folks out.”

She went on to suggest that if the company continues to fail its users and threaten their safety, it should be stripped of its power and broken up into smaller companies.

“When it’s stuff going on here and people are telling you kids are killing themselves, pay attention,” she said. “Or we’re going to take the right to have this away from you. They broke up AT&T.”

Watch above, via ABC.