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Earlier this month, Twitter threw a tweet from Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari threatening to punish secessionists in the region for violating the platform’s rules. Two days later, the Nigerian government suspended Twitter, ironically announcing it on Twitter. A month earlier, the Ugandan government turn off the internet in his country, which was linked to the ruling party after a fight with Facebook and Twitter they were suspended for coordinating “non-authentic behavior”.
The battle between African governments and Big Tech platforms has been a painful one. While the platforms ultimately enforce the content guidelines, these long-standing actions have been worse than moderating the outcome of any content: citizens with access cut off.
Human rights lawyers and activists in both Nigeria and Uganda have stressed that these bans are violations of the constitution against freedom of expression. In Uganda, however, the constitutional court recently he dismissed a case the challenge of shutting down the internet in the country’s elections. The court determined that the ban was “done in good faith and secured the country against the risk of security and violence,” setting a dangerous precedent. The over-expansion of authority is redefining itself more territory search to end dissent From the Congo to Ethiopia, technology companies will often find the principles of moderating their human rights and content against profit intentions.
Nigerians are also suing the government’s decision in court, saying the suspension of Twitter is an attempt to silence criticism. The country is slipping into the buhari dictatorship, which previously seized power in a military coup in the 1980s. Nigerian youth believe Twitter is the most active opposition to oppression. As we saw with the #ENDSARS protests last year, the platform has raised their voices, giving the government a way to hold the police accountable after peacefully firing on peaceful protesters Slight massacre. Nigeria’s thriving technology ecosystem, which has the most startups in Africa, is wondering what future this ban will send to investors as a threat signal. Many local businesses that sell through Twitter have also been affected.
The Nigerian government says the suspension of Twitter had nothing to do with deleting Buhari’s tweet; they say he said it was to mock a separatist leader “Provides guidelines” through the platform. Whatever the real reason, the truth is that a platform is being lost again after being in front of the authoritarians. -Contrary effects taken by governments Poland, Vietnam, and Pakistan they have followed a similar pattern and are called “The hostages are taking the law.The playbook goes like this: suspending a social media platform, then asking the platform to form an office or hire representatives in the country, especially to receive government orders and store data locally. Nigeria already he took the first step requiring all social networking sites to register locally to operate in the country. In fact, platforms are forced to put their employees at risk …As we have seen in India, where they searched Twitter offices several times, and Brazil, where the vice president of Facebook was arrested.
Since the 2016 U.S. election, a large portion of the “techlash” has focused on promoting platforms for creating harmful content removal systems. The content moderation boom shows cracks. The difficulty of moderating the ocean of content published by billions every day was evident before Covid-19 and the election disinformation were created. Now, however, the political challenge is daunting, and the long-term survival of the platforms or the open internet we know of is unknown. More content moderation is not the best solution. While it’s laudable that Twitter has its back to putting it in front of authoritarian governments, the company has some tough compensation. Deleting content does not delete the root cause of the content.
As the platforms confront the policies of African countries, through lines of fact-checking and moderation programs, lines of struggle will be drawn. Beyond giving weak statements, Western governments have barely responded; there have been no harsh punishments coming in the way of the attacking countries. Twitter will largely be left to its own devices with the Nigerian government, and the Nigerian government will win. Unfortunately, Twitter will never be able to replace or compensate for organizations that have failed.
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