Nigerian micro-blogging platform Nairaland had its servers taken down after its administrators failed to promptly address an abuse complaint, Seun Osewa, the platform’s founder, said on Tuesday.
The platform’s sudden downtime had worried hundreds of users who interact and find information on the platform. The concerns raised by the users on X included fears that the platform might have been hacked. But Mr Osewa clarified in a series of posts that the platform first went down as an action against an abuse report that the administrators had ignored. “Nairaland’s server was taken down because I overlooked an abuse report that was originally sent on the 14th. After the takedown, I removed the offensive content,” he said in a post. “The UI for bringing back the server didn’t work, so it took hours to get support on how to get that done. Minutes after the forum was brought back, they took the server down again with no warning. “I’m guessing that the content I removed was still cached on Cloudflare servers, so they could still see it. I have cleared the caches now, but they are not communicating. I hope they will communicate tomorrow,” he added.
Mr Osewa further said that he had completed the process of getting the site back online and all he had left to do was to wait. “The technical support team has informed me that only the abuse team has the power to reinstate our server, that their review could take up to 48 hours, and that nothing can be done to speed up the process. I’ve been informed that the only thing I can do is wait. It’s humbling,” he said.
