In a previous article by Metro Times, we explained how Nairaland, the popular Nigerian online forum was taken down by Cloudflare after a report was filed against them. This downtime was experienced for 2 days and now, the platform seems to be back online.
Although, this seems temporary as Seun Osewa (Founder of Nairaland) shared a statement that read “So we had to transfer Nairaland to a temporary host in order to bring it back to you. A very time-consuming process. We are not fully back, even though most features of the site are working. We still have a long way to go. Additional downtime is likely; don’t let it alarm you,”
Osewa had said he and his team are working to restore the website permanently and this has somehow eased the tensions of users. But whilst Nairaland is back, it is able to carter to the needs of its 3 million users. Previous tweets from Osewa hint that we could be expecting updates as it acknowledged the need for Nairaland to evolve beyond its present state. And going forward we could also see some changes to the moderation on Nairaland.
This recent downtime has raised questions like how much power Cloudflare really holds over a business and if this would make platforms more transparent and accountable for content on their website.