With Facebook coming out yesterday to explain why they banned several accounts linked to the Ugandan government, many of the citizens have today woken up failing to access their Facebook accounts.
According to several users, its mainly those who use Airtel and MTN as their internet service providers who are finding themselves failing to access the big social media platform.
When asked, many of the users said that they couldn’t access Facebook accounts. For some of them, they could sign in but couldn’t upload images while others just couldn’t post at all.
There is a belief that this is retaliation by the Ugandan government following Facebook’s suspension of some of the accounts that were linked to the campaign team of the ruling party.
Facebook’s other messaging company WhatsApp is facing some similar issues where users are not able to make calls and others failing to load images.
This comes just days after the Ugandan government also blocked access to Google and Apple play-stores in which many citizens can’t download apps that they want or need.
Why did Facebook Shutdown Facebook Accounts and Pages?
Facebook shut down accounts it says are linked to the Ugandan government, only days before elections for a new president and parliament.
The social media giant said a network, in connection with the ministry of information, had been using fake and duplicate accounts to impersonate users and boost the popularity of posts.
“We found this network to be linked to the government Citizens Interaction Center at the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology in Uganda,” Facebook said in a statement.
“They used fake and duplicate accounts to manage pages, comment on other people’s content, impersonate users, re-share posts in groups to make them appear more popular than they were,” the statement continued.
In response, the head of Uganda Media Center Mr. Ofwono Opondo who also doubles as the government spokesperson in an interview with the BBC says that the social media giants are playing usual games and says that they haven’t been consulted on any actions that were to be taken by the social media giants.
“We are not familiar with anybody who complains about these accounts,” he said. “The owners have not received any notice and no-one was asked to make any response to the allegations.”
Mr Opondo described Facebook as high-handed. “I think they are playing the usual games,” he added. “We know that they have a side in this election perhaps.”
