republicans for refusing to raise the debt limit. they need to stop playing russian roulette with the u.s. economy. o donnell: covid cases dropping: the hopeful news as america sees fewer new infections. plus, why dr. fauci revises his guidance about whether families should gather for the holidays. pivotal supreme god, guns and abortions, what could be the most consequential year in a generation. school lunch crisis, the nationwide shortage leading staff to spend their own money to feed student. breaking news: federal agents shot, gunfire on an amtrak train. and tom s triumphant return, tom brady s hero welcome as he breaks an n.f.l. record. this is the cbs evening news with norah o donnell, reporting from the nation s capital. o donnell: good evening, to our viewers in the west thank you so much for joining us. social media giant facebook, instagram and whatsapp. all of them knocked offline for about six hours today leaving billions of users locked out. the cause of
president biden blasts republicans for refusing to raise the debt limit. they need to stop playing russian roulette with the u.s. economy. o donnell: covid caseso dropping. the hopeful news as america sees fewer new infections. plus why dr. fauci revises his guidance about whether families should gather for the holidays. pivotal supreme court turn, god, guns and abortions, what could be the most consequential year in a generation. school lunch crisis, the nationwide shortage leading staff to spend their own money to feed student. breaking news, federal agents shot, gunfire on an amtrak train. and tom s triumphant return, tom brady s hero welcome as he breaks an n.f.l. record. this is the cbs evening news with norah o donnell, reporting from the nation s capital. o donnell: good evening, and thank you so much for joining us. we want to begin tonight with what has been a brutal day for social media giant facebook, instagram and what s app. all knocked offline for abou
Polarizing content. conspiracy theory recommendations started on day two. after about a week the account received a k non q anon. two, false content, and week three the accounts news feed was an intensifying mix of misinformation, misleading and recycled content polarizing memes and con smirsy content dispersed with engagement bait. you can sy why are we taking the incredibly out there topics q anon, why are these things facebook is choosing to show you and it s because those things get the highest engagement. gasoline on a fire. reporter: facebook says it uses things like that test account to identify security issues and was involved in its decision to ban q anon from its platforms. the company tell us hate speech has declined by 50% on its platforms in the last three quarters.
o donnell: good evening, and thank you so much for joining us. we want to begin tonight with what has been a brutal day for social media giant facebook, instagram and what s app. all knocked offline for about six hours today leaving billions of users locked out. the cause of the outage still not clear tonight but reports the systems inside facebook were down, some employees had difficulty communicating and troubleshooting the problem. newborn stock tanked taking a nose dive today sliding nearly 4% and forbes said mark zuckerberg s fortune declined by nearly $6 billionch but the greatest cough to the social media giant may be new complaints made to the fcc, allegations from a former facebook employee, france francs haugen, who copied tens of thousands of pages of company research, accusing facebook putting the company s profits ahead of public good. kris van cleave reporting on facebook that you didn t see on 60 minutes.
Facebook s entire statement is i to testify before the senate congress committee tomorrow where she will tell senators they need to better regulate facebook. norah. o donnell: interesting new details, kris van cleave, thank you. tonight we re learning what might have caused an offshore oil pipeline to rupture unleashing a environmental disaster along the southern california coast. more than # 125,000 gallons of crude oil leaked into the pacific. animals are dying and world famous beaches could be closed for months. cbs s lilia luciano is there. reporter: operators of the line believe they found the source of leak as still state and federal agencies deployed more than 100 people in an all-out effort to stop the spiel from spoiling california s most pries beaches. tonight one early theory is a pipeline may have been punctured by a passing ship. is there a suspicion the leak causenc