Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp down in Southern Africa; Crisis hits internet security firm

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp experienced network problems around the world, including in South Africa, on Wednesday afternoon.

The outages appear to be connected to US cyber security firm Cloudflare which has been affected by an outage at telecommunications provider Verizon.

Cloudflare has been responsible for downtime on several websites across the globe the past week, including BuzzFeed, Medium, Soundcloud and Canva.

Last week it blamed its network issues on an outage at telecommunications provider Verizon, and on Tuesday it blamed a “bad software” deployment.

The firm said the issues it is experiencing is not related to a cyber-attack.

Downdetector showed that the platforms were particularly hard hit in Europe and the East Coast of the United States.

Lloyd M’bwana

I’m a Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resource (LUANAR)’s Environmental Science graduate (Malawi) and UK’s ICM Journalism and Media studies scholar. Also University of Malawi (UNIMA) Library Science Scholar. I have been The Malawi Country Manager and duty editor for the Maravi Post since 2019. My duty editor’s job is to ensure that the news is covered properly, that it is delivered on time, and that it is created to the standards set out in the editorial guidelines of the Maravi Post.