Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp hit by an outage

Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp users were in a frenzy after many attempted to log in today only to find that the sites were down. The outage appeared to have affected users around the world, with thousands of reports within the first hour. According to Down Detector, the outages appear to have started around 4:48 p.m. …

Uganda passes strange law to impose a controversial tax on WhatsApp and Facebook ‘to stop gossip’

Uganda’s parliament has passed a law to impose a controversial tax on people using social media platforms. The new Excise Duty (Amendment) Bill will also impose various other taxes, including a 1% levy on the total value of mobile money transactions – which civil society groups complain will affect poorer Ugandans who rarely use banking …

Social media use soon to be regulated in Zimbabwe

Social media use will soon be regulated in Zimbabwe, with the State already drawing up legal and policy instruments to govern information communication technologies. Local web developers are also in the process of stitching together products similar to social networking sites such as Facebook, Whatsapp, Youtube, Skype and Twitter so as to enable greater supervision. …