TECHDIGEST – The Engineering team at Facebook has revealed the underlying factors that led to six hours of global outage that also affected WhatApp and Instagram

The Engineering team at Facebook has revealed the underlying factors that led to six hours of global outage that also affected WhatApp and Instagram.

The global social networking company lost billions of dollars to the outages that started about 4.43pm (WAT) on Monday.

According to NetBlocks, which tracks internet outages and their impact, the outage had already cost the global economy about $160m per hour.

Facebook stock had gone down by about 5.5 per cent. Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive officer of Facebook, also lost nearly $7bn since the outage began.

Facebook and its affiliates have 2.9 billion monthly active users. The shutdown is reminiscent of 2019, when Facebook shut down in its biggest outage till date (a 24-hour shut down).

For hours when navigating to Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp websites, a server error appeared, which indicated there was an issue with Facebook’

This has been confirmed by in a blog post ‘Update about the October 4th outage’, written by Santosh Janardhan, vice president, Engineering and Infrastructure at Facebook.

He started by apologizing “To all the people and businesses around the world who depend on us, we are sorry for the inconvenience caused by today’s outage across our platforms.

“We’ve been working as hard as we can to restore access, and our systems are now back up and running.

Janardhan wrote that the underlying cause of this outage also impacted many of the internal tools and systems “we use in our day-to-day operations, complicating our attempts to quickly diagnose and resolve the problem”.

“Our engineering teams have learned that configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centers caused issues that interrupted this communication”.

The disruption to network traffic, he said, had a cascading effect on the way Facebook’s data centers communicate, bringing its services to a halt.

“Our services are now back online and we’re actively working to fully return them to regular operations.

“We want to make clear at this time we believe the root cause of this outage was a faulty configuration change. We also have no evidence that user data was compromised as a result of this downtime.

“People and businesses around the world rely on us everyday to stay connected. We understand the impact outages like these have on people’s lives, and our responsibility to keep people informed about disruptions to our services.

“We apologize to all those affected, and we’re working to understand more about what happened today so we can continue to make our infrastructure more resilient”.

Source – The Verge/Google

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TECHDIGEST – Nearly half of all countries that have restricted social media access since 2015 are African, making the continent the least tolerant of social media globally, a new tracker says.

Thirty African countries have restricted social media access in this period, out of a total of 66 globally, according to the cybersecurity company Surfshark, which describes Africa as “a volatile environment for social media.”

Surfshark analyzed social media restrictions in 180 countries from 2015. It collected data through open-source information from Freedom House, which is a nonprofit that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights; Netblocks, which is a watchdog organization that monitors cybersecurity and internet governance; and news reports.

The tracker considers social media as social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, and communication apps including Skype, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Viber.

Social media restriction is one tool that African governments use to stop dissent, with another being complete internet shutdowns. They typically do these during elections and protests.

“The practice of limiting social media access is usually the product of anti-democratic governments seeking to suppress citizens’ freedom,” the tracker says.

The results are far-reaching, as these actions conceal human rights violations, restrict access to information and negatively impact businesses.

According to the Surfshark tracker, at least 16 African countries have restricted social media access in the past due to elections and at least seven have done so due to protests and demonstrations.

This year alone, at least four African countries—Uganda, Senegal, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo have restricted social media access.

Globally, about one third of countries have restricted social media since 2015. The tracker notes that restriction of social media access is particularly prevalent in countries where state authorities own or control the internet infrastructure.

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TECHDIGEST – Nigeria businesses may have lost N150.46bn ($366.88m) since the Federal Government’s suspension on Twitter took effect in the country on June 5.

This figure was calculated based on the NetBlocks Cost of Shutdown Tool. According to the tool, it costs Nigeria’s economy N102.77m ($250,600) every hour to ban Twitter.

It has been 1,464 hours (61 days) since the ban. In that time period, Nigeria may have lost N150.46bn.

The NetBlocks Cost of Shutdown Tool estimates the economic impact of an internet disruption, mobile data blackout or app restriction in a nation using indicators from the World Bank, International Telecommunication Union, Eurostat and U.S. Census.

The Federal Government had on June 4 announced the suspension of Twitter in Nigeria. Telecommunication companies started blocking access to Twitter on June 5, after they received a directive from the Nigerian Communications Commission to block access to Twitter.

The FG had cited the persistent use of the platform for activities capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence as the reason for the suspension.

Following the ban, groups including the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, had dragged the Federal Government to the ECOWAS court.

The PUNCH reported that the Federal Government told a Federal High Court in Lagos that it had not stopped Nigerians from using Twitter, adding that many Nigerians still used it every day.

This was in a counter-affidavit the government deposed to in response to an originating motion filed by human rights lawyer, Inibehe Effiong.

The affidavit said, “The applicant (Effiong) and the class he seeks to represent can still operate those Twitter accounts from anywhere in the world and even from Nigeria.

“Nigerians are still tweeting, even at this moment as the ban on Twitter is not aimed at intimidating Nigerians or an infringement on the rights of Nigerians to express their opinion.”

According to a report by Statista, Nigeria has about 33 million active social media users, with about 26 per cent on Twitter.

Since the ban, some Nigerians have migrated to the use of Virtual Private Networks.

ExpressVPN said in June that it recorded an increase of over 200 per cent in web traffic from Nigeria since the Federal Government banned Twitter.

VPN works by changing the location of devices they run on. Small and Medium-sized Enterprises have said this has not been good for their businesses.

In a report in The PUNCH, financial planner, Kalu Aja said, “Social media enables the brand to talk directly to consumers. It’s direct marketing, specific and targeted. There is no organisation on earth, profit or not-for-profit, without some form of advocacy via social media.

“The Twitter Suspension raises a narrative about doing business in Nigeria, and it’s not a good narrative. Specifically, Twitter and social media allow Small and Medium-scale Enterprises and sole proprietors with zero marketing budgets but a smartphone to build and communicate a brand promise.”

Olanregun Ayodele who sells women’s and men’s clothing on Twitter said, “Twitter was very important to my business. I got a lot of customers from Twitter.

“I can’t put an amount to it. But I have made money to sustain myself and my family from Twitter. Since the ban began, business has been stressful and tiring. Business is dry. Normally the end of the month is always booming but since the ban, it’s been so slow.

“People coming to my DM have reduced a lot; VPN has reduced lots of people and followers on Twitter.”

Another SME entrepreneur, Babatunde Motunrayo, who sells female accessories on Twitter said, “Twitter was very helpful. I got 75 per cent sales here, compared to other apps I sell on. I use Instagram too but make more sales from Twitter.

“It’s not been the same. Sales have been poor. Having to turn on and off your VPN most times makes you reply to clients late and before you know it, you’ve lost the client because some say they’ve got it from another vendor. Sometimes you won’t get messages early. Some people stopped using Twitter outright.”

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TECH DIGEST – Nigeria has lost N24.72bn ($60.14m) in 10 days to the Twitter ban that took effect on June 5.

According to NetBlocks Cost of Shutdown Tool, Nigeria loses N102.9m ($250,600) every hour to the ban.

The Federal Government had on June 4, 2021 announced the suspension of Twitter in Nigeria.

The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, had cited ‘the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence’ as the reason for the suspension.

According to a report by Statista, Nigeria has about 33 million active social media users, with about 26 per cent on Twitter.

When asked what the ban meant to businesses in the nation, the Director General of the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines, and Agriculture, Ayoola Olukanni, said, “Communication is a significant part of sales and marketing in this digital age. Consequently, the Twitter ban will likely impact negatively and disrupt businesses especially Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises who rely on social media, such as Facebook, Instagram including Twitter to conduct business.

“It will therefore most likely negatively impact the IT sector of the economy which is already facing several other challenges.

“While it may be considered that there are alternative social media platforms, the abrupt nature of the suspension would mean a loss of existing contacts and a cost of migration.

“We must of course also not and cannot, discountenance the national security dimension of the misuse of social media and micro-blogging platforms to inspire violence outside its use to conduct Business.”

Twitter had reached out to the government that it was ready to meet for an open discussion to address mutual concerns and see the service restored. The company revealed this in a tweet.

The company had said, “Today marks one week since Twitter was blocked in Nigeria. We have informed the Nigerian government that we are ready to meet for an open discussion to address mutual concerns and see the service restored.

“We remain advocates for the free and Open Internet everywhere.”

Mercy Omohoro, a Twitter user who also sells on the app, said, “Honestly, it has always been twitter. I started from twitter. I only started spreading to Instagram a few months back and I’ve not been able to get used to the platform that well.

“I sell wigs and press on nails. I was about to launch a new product when the ban happened. My head exploded.”

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