If things weren't bad enough in Libya, now the country has to go without Google and Facebook.
All Internet activity has reportedly been shut down in the North African country for the second time in two weeks.
Google's Transparency Report shows that as of about 8 a.m. Friday in Libya, all traffic on the search engine went dead.
The most fascinating thing is that Rensys reports all Internet service providers appear to be up in the country but it appears as if the country has found a new way to turn off the world wide web creating "a post-apocalyptic scenario."
After a quiet week, we received reports tonight that Libyans in Tripoli were suddenly unable to use various Internet communications utilities. Examining the BGP routing table, we saw nothing unusual — all Libyan routes up and stable.
But our traceroutes tell a different story (no responses from Libyan hosts). All of the Libyan-hosted government websites we tested (i.e., the ones that are actually hosted in Libya, and not elsewhere) were unreachable.
One of the culprits of the outage could have been Google's own YouTube, which is reportedly popular with dissidents.
Traffic to the video-sharing site had been increasing in Libya just before the shut down.
