An estimated 5.35 billion people worldwide access the internet every single day. Whether online shopping, working remotely, or chatting with friends, internet access has become a steady aspect of everyday life. In the late 1980s, less than 1% of stored information was digital. By 2012, this number reached an astounding 99%. This rapid integration of digital technology generated an open space for big tech companies to step in and gain control. The presence of these companies has been extremely profitable to the global economy, generating billions of dollars in annual revenue. There can be, however, extremely harmful complications when something goes awry. The current system of digital monoculture should be broken, as it puts the general public in a vulnerable position, susceptible to attacks and other serious issues.
Digital monoculture is the homogenization of our digital environment, where a few select big tech companies operate a majority of worldwide digital operations. This established system creates an extremely delicate digital landscape in which one small technical issue can result in many wide-scale issues. CrowdStrike, an American cybersecurity technology company, was the key catalyst of one of these technological complications in the summer of 2024. On July 19th, CrowdStrike distributed a defective update to all of its systems. Unfortunately for millions of people, including the company’s 24,000 customers (including Microsoft), this single flaw resulted in the largest outage recorded in history, crashing over 8.5 million systems worldwide. With the help of Microsoft, CrowdStrike was able to issue the fix within a few short hours, though the after-effects of the outage continued to linger for multiple days. This disastrous incident resulted in an estimated financial loss of at least $10 billion dollars. To name just a few of the numerous consequences, thousands of flights were canceled, banks across the globe were forced to close, government agencies—including NASA and the Department of Homeland Security—were unable to operate, and numerous American TV stations were incapable of broadcasting. Though this was the most widespread and impactful fault of digital monoculture that society has experienced, it was certainly not the first.
One of the first major digital outages happened on July 16th, 1997. Network Solutions Inc. experienced a database failure, crashing over one million different sites. Attempting to do a routine cleanup of expired domain names, one Network Solutions employee accidentally deleted every single .com and .net domain. At the time, nine different servers managed domain name and IP address information, with Network Solutions in charge of only one. Unfortunately, the servers run by Network Solutions happened to be the authoritative record, meaning the other eight servers replicated any and all changes made by Network Solutions. In having just one entity control all domains, a single slip-up resulted in thousands of issues worldwide. This is a prime example of the dangers behind an established digital monoculture. Many couldn’t receive emails, news sites were unavailable, and most of the internet was completely inaccessible. Network Solutions was able to resolve the issue on their end within four hours, but the other eight servers had to manually fix the issue, resulting in multiple days of internet troubles. At the time, an estimated 70 million people used the internet regularly. Though this is a massive number of people, it does not compare to the amount affected by more recent internet crashes.
Dyn Inc., an internet performance management company, experienced a major attack on October 21, 2016. Three distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attacks were launched against Dyn, which managed a major Domain Name System (DNS). Internet platforms and services were unavailable across Europe and North America, including sites like Amazon, Netflix, Twitter, Reddit, and CNN. This event remains the largest DDoS attack to date, and was twice as large as any previously recorded attack. The catalyst of the attack was a botnet, a network of devices infected by malware. Prior to this attack, botnets were known to consist of a network of computers with which attackers could target and infect vulnerable systems. However, the botnet used in this attack consisted of IoT devices, meaning “internet of things.” This allowed the attackers to use electronic products like home routers, IP cameras, and even baby monitors, giving them access to hundreds of thousands of devices to distribute their malware. After weeks of federal investigation, it was determined that three college students were responsible for creating the botnet, though the attack’s perpetrators remain unknown. At the time of the attack Dyn managed a majority of top-visited sites, inhibiting people from accessing a large majority of news and media. The attacks would not have had such a major effect without a singular centralized DNS.
Before the 2024 CrowdStrike incident, the largest recorded internet outage was the 2021 Facebook outage. Nearly 3 billion people experienced this crash’s effects, which lasted seven hours. On the morning of October 4, 2021, visitors to Facebook began experiencing difficulties accessing the platform. Throughout the day, other Meta subsidiaries, which own Facebook, began to shut down, including Instagram and WhatsApp. In a statement issued by Facebook, the confirmed cause of the outage was a change in the routers that coordinate network traffic. Because Facebook self-hosts its own website and domain, every single domain under the Meta name was completely defunct. One Forbes journalist reported that Facebook lost about $65 million due to the outage, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s personal net worth decreasing by nearly $6 billion. Considering Meta has nearly 4 billion users across its platforms, the outage affected an enormous number of internet users. Following the outage, many of these users turned to other applications like Gmail and Twitter to report and discuss the outage. This unexpected traffic resulted in reported outages for these platforms, despite being completely unrelated to the Meta-inflicted incident. This incident in particular highlights the hazards behind digital monoculture and centralized operations. As previously mentioned, Meta self-hosts a large majority of its operations. Because the source of the outage was an internal issue, many Meta employees were unable to access their own offices, as malfunctioning keycards were an apparent side effect. A single vulnerability, being just one technical glitch, completely collapsed the company’s infrastructure.
All of these incidents, whether they be the result of one employee’s accident or a targeted attack, have one key aspect in common: the utilization of a centralized system.
Centralized systems rely on a single point of control. For CrowdStrike, it was their updating system that distributed a single faulty update to every one of its operating systems simultaneously. For Dyn, it was their Domain Name System, for which one attack managed to completely shut down a large majority of sites they managed. These malfunctions don’t only affect the companies themselves but the millions of customers they serve.
Following the 2024 CrowdStrike crash, over 5,000 flights were canceled worldwide, affecting over 500,000 passengers. CrowdStrike’s stock fell more than 11 percent. Major banks, including Chase and Bank of America, could not operate successfully due to system failure. 911 call centers also experienced outages, preventing people from accessing urgent care, while hospitals were forced to pause non-urgent visits because patient records were inaccessible. To make amends, CrowdStrike offered $10 Uber Eats vouchers to company partners that were affected by the outage, which failed to make up for the estimated $5.4 billion lost by businesses across the United States. Bringing attention to the fragility of technological centralization, assistant professor of engineering at Cornell University Gregory Falco explained, “The incident is a great example of the cascading failures that can occur given our relatively homogenous systems that comprise the backbone of IT infrastructure.”
Despite its extensive history of crashes and other widespread technical issues, this practice of digital monoculture is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. Centralizing technological infrastructure can reduce costs, as media companies can avoid incurring the expenses of hiring specialists. Additionally, it grants media companies full freedom in their day-to-day activity, as they do not have to wait on or report to a superior entity to operate its system.
In the modern digital age, it would be ill-considered to refuse to take advantage of the technological advances that are being made. However, it is impossible to ignore the negative consequences of these systems. The danger of digital monoculture has been demonstrated time and time again, and it is only a matter of time before another wide-scale crash hits the internet.
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This article was edited by Brianna Budhram.
Anika Bobeck 
Daniela Cadena Hernandez 
Serena Dash