Three popular social media applications –Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp have stopped functioning since 5.00pm, Nigerian time today.
This happened a few hours following a whistleblower’s call on Facebook saying they engaged in a “betrayal of democracy.”
The three apps founded by Mark Zuckerberg offer online social networking services and are run on shared infrastructure.
Users of these applications have moved conversations surrounding this shutdown on Twitter and Telegram, to share their experiences.
To curtail the concerns of users globally, Facebook has addressed the matter via a post on Twitter.
Read also: How Nigeria’s Twitter ban will stifle digital ecosystem
“We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We are working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and we apologize for any inconvenience,” the post stated.
While some social media users see this as a temporary shutdown which is due to a domain name server (DNS) failure- a structure that forms the web’s infrastructure, others anticipate a longer period of the shutdown.
“Hope it stays down. Bring it all down. A week without the internet? People wouldn’t know what to do,” @Frankem80 tweeted.
The applications have remained down for at least 4hours and are still counting.
