Facebook outage
Facebook is back but many social media users are still upset at yesterday's one-hour shutdown and some political activists report their pages are no longer accessible.
Facebook is back but many social media users are still upset at yesterday's one-hour shutdown and some political activists report their pages are no longer accessible.
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This is what you get if you try to access the Facebook page of anti-coup activist Sombat Boonngamanong, leading to unconfirmed suspicions Facebook is cooperating with local authorities.
Facebook outage stirs fury
POST REPORTERS
A one-hour outage of Facebook yesterday sparked a public outcry against violation of people’s rights to access the internet.
Authorities and the military junta, however, denied having a hand in it and blamed a technical glitch for the nationwide blackout of the world’s largest social media site.
Facebook was found to have been unreachable nationwide from 3.50pm to 4.40pm. This prompted criticism on other social media channels to erupt. Streams of phone calls were made to the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission and other internet providers to seek an explanation for the shutdown.
Facebook is the most popular social media site in Thailand with 26 million users, 17 million of whom use it every day.
The incident raised concerns that the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) was trying to stop anti-coup groups from using social media to incite opposition. The concern was fuelled by messages shared earlier yesterday on social media that Facebook was to be blocked in the afternoon.
Users also blasted the outage for having a negative impact on online business on the site.
Surachai Srisarakam, permanent secretary of the Information and Communication Technology Ministry, denied Facebook had been asked to block its server. He also said the ministry had not forced local internet service providers (ISPs) to shut down the site.
He said the shutdown was because traffic to Facebook overloaded the servers and internet gateways of local ISPs, leading to service disruption.
Overall internet gateway systems had been fixed and normal service resumed before 5pm, he said. The junta insisted it has no policy to block Facebook and blamed a technical glitch for the blackout.
NCPO spokesman Winthai Suvaree clarified the matter in a televised announcement on TV Pool that the inability to access Facebook resulted from a technical problem.
He said the NCPO had assigned the Information and Communication Technology Ministry to fix the problem. However, an industry source conceded that the NCPO yesterday ordered the shutdown of Facebook but declined to give further details.
Thai Netizen Network spokesman Arthit Suriyawongkul said the brief outage of Facebook a day after the NCPO announcement that they have set up a panel to examine internet traffic has naturally prompted people to believe that the military played a role in yesterday’s shutdown.
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