Facebook has been blocked in the Libyan capital of Tripoli and other cities, residents said on Monday as fighting between rival groups raged.
Libya mainly relies on Facebook for the news. Officials, ministries and armed groups that effectively control the country use Facebook to post the statement.
The blockage started at noon, angry users wrote on Twitter. Several Libya residents confirmed they could not access Facebook.
Tripoli has been shaken by more than a week of clashes between rival groups, the latest episode of chaos in the North African country since the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 reports Reuters.
According to the resident, there was no apparent response from officials over who was behind the blockage. Non-Facebook websites could be accessed.
A lack of security had led to outages. Maintenance engineers were unable to reach some stations which had stopped working due to a lack of power, stated Libyan utility LPTIC, which owns the two-state telecoms firms.
It did not address the Facebook issue.
Access to the web is controlled by state firms and monitored by security bodies which are effectively controlled by armed groups working with the weak UN-backed government in Tripoli.
Newspapers play no role in Libya, and independent national media based inside the country scarcely exists as journalists often face threats from armed groups or officials unhappy with critical coverage.
© Thomson Reuters 2018
About Facebook
Facebook is an American online social media and social networking service company based in Menlo Park, California. Its website was launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes.
Most of Facebook’s revenue comes from advertising. Facebook generally has a lower clickthrough rate (CTR) for advertisements than most major websites. According to BusinessWeek.com, banner advertisements on Facebook have generally received one-fifth the number of clicks compared to those on the Web as a whole, although specific comparisons can reveal a much larger disparity.
In February 2015, Facebook announced that it had reached two million active advertisers with most of the gain coming from small businesses. An active advertiser is an advertiser that has advertised on the Facebook platform in the last 28 days. In March 2016, Facebook announced that it reached three million active advertisers with more than 70% from outside the US.
