Nairaland temporarily abandons Cloudflare services, returns online

Nairaland is back online a few days after its web server was deactivated by Cloudflare, a US-based hosting provider, citing ethical concerns.

"We had to transfer Nairaland to a temporary host in order to bring it back to you," according to Seun Osewa, the founder. "We are not fully back, even though most features of the site are working. We still have a long way to go. Additional downtime is likely; don't let it alarm you."

With Nairaland's return, the platform will not only explore alternative hosting options but will also focus on content moderation to prevent a recurrence of the incidents that led to its deactivation.

"Forum members should learn civility and avoid ethnic profiling and "cuss" words.
Mods should be up and doing ensuring the Forum is sanitised. Bots or algorithms should be deployed to take down offensive posts ASAP. Management should run business continuity tests periodically and have contingency plans in place," one of the users said in response to Osewa's note on the platform.

Founded in 2005, Nairaland is a leading online forum in Nigeria, and ranks as the seventh most visited website in the country, with over 28 million visits in November. In recent times, many platform users have advocated for an overhaul of its 18-year-old user interface (UI) and content moderation strategy. The current framework has permitted the display of inappropriate advertisements on the platform, prompting the call for improvements.

"Nairaland is too important for us to let this happen again," Osewa said.