Hacker News Reader

Comment by OoTheNigerian | Hacker News Reader

For specific context: a tweet that was deemed threatening and inciteful to a segment of the country - the south east (where I'm from), was sent from the President's account.

After sustained uproar and outrage, Twitter deleted the Tweet.

Blocking Twitter is the response.

---

For background context: This government is very unpopular. Twitter has been the medium where the atrocities of the government has been publicized. Last year there was a very popular protest #ENDSARS (campaigning against police brutalization and killings) to which Jack Dorsey made a donation.

Earlier this year, Twitter opened their West African office in Ghana. It was seen as a massive snub and embarrassment to Nigeria. So the government has had a hurt ego brewing for a while.

PS: The great irony is that this government used the influence of social media to get into power. So this is them throwing down the ladder after using it.

AMA.

View on HN

Also worth noting that the Nigerian government has explicitly been using China/the CCP as an inspiration for its information & communications policy for a while now.

Alas, they're not interested in copying the economic growth or infrastructure development to go with the authoritarianism. Not even a crumb of carrot to go with the stick.

For a bit more context (from the article)

Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey personally donated money to groups organizing protests in Nigeria. Twitter also created a special emoji just for the protests.

For a bit more context, the protests that Jack Dorsey donated to were against a police unit that regularly terrorised, extorted (ahem, robbed) and sometimes murdered young people based almost entirely on profiling such as "having locs" and "using an iPhone"[0].

0. For example this is as recently as two days ago: https://twitter.com/codebeast/status/1400423232189120521

> Twitter also created a special emoji just for the protests

Ooft. Although I know nothing of Nigerian politics, that seemed like a dumb move.

From the point of view of a European living in America the #ENDSARS protests looked very similarly motivated as the #BLM protests in America and Europe. #BLM got their own emoji, so why wouldn’t #ENDSARS?

Speaking as a Nigerian, somehow I'm not quite sure we're thought of as real communities with real people living real lives and not just a vague political blob on a map.

You also see this in many people's inability to mentally separate a government from its citizens - they themselves know that they don't fully agree with everything their own governments do (even the ones they like), but other places get treated as monoliths whose governments' actions and opinions are obviously completely representative and in the best interests of the whole.

Why does it seem like a dumb move?

Because Twitter is getting involved in politics. The US didn't like it when Russia got involved in its elections, so why is it ok for Twitter?

Explain how exactly Twitter (the company) was getting involved in Nigerian elections, please?

Censorship. World leaders won't be gagged by Jack Dorsey. India is next.

The government whose action you're commending quite literally has a history of arresting & detaining its critics, extorting & sometimes murdering its citizens in the street, supporting blasphemy laws, and blocking content and even financial transactions that it deems dissident (and those blocks are implemented with such a wide brush that plenty of completely unrelated sites often get caught in the net).

But of course, the real censorship is when a foreign social media platform that's used by a few percent of the population at maximum takes down a post.

It's always funny to see people cosplay at caring about censorship by...jumping to support the first actual authoritarian in sight.

And all that's beside the fact that this had nothing whatsoever to do with elections.

> The government whose action you're commending quite literally has a history of arresting & detaining its critics, extorting & sometimes murdering its citizens in the street, supporting blasphemy laws, and blocking content and even financial transactions that it deems dissident (and those blocks are implemented with such a wide brush that plenty of completely unrelated sites often get caught in the net).

So has the US. Americans, and their mega corporations, have no moral high ground to lecture others.

> But of course, the real censorship is when a foreign social media platform that's used by a few percent of the population at maximum takes down a post.

Who elected Jack Dorsey and his band of far-left censors king? Twitter is a guest in every foreign country, as we're seeing play out.

> It's always funny to see people cosplay at caring about censorship by...jumping to support the first actual authoritarian in sight.

No. Rather the pot should refrain from calling the kettle black

> And all that's beside the fact that this had nothing whatsoever to do with elections.

Censoring politicians has everything to do with elections.

> So has the US. Americans, and their mega corporations, have no moral high ground to lecture others.

That's nice, but considering that I am a Nigerian I don't really see what that has to do with me.

> No. Rather the pot should refrain from calling the kettle black

"On the one hand we have a former military dictator currently heading a regime that has repeatedly shown that it has no qualms using its security forces to kill civilians in order to keep the populace in line (besides starving them of resources). On the other we have a social media platform deleting a post because people reported it. These two things are of course the same."

> Censoring politicians has everything to do with elections.

Twitter removed a tweet that can very credibly be read as threatening genocidal action after Nigerians reported it to the platform as threatening violence.

I am still very patiently waiting for you to explicitly explain how, precisely, this is interfering with the country's elections.

Twitter naively overplayed their hand. These are the consequences.

We are speaking of the platform that find it ok to ban a legally elected president because they disagreed with him politically. Twitter needs to be controlled more effectively to remain politically neutral, or they should register themselves as a political organization instead of pretending to be a business.

Do you expect a peaceful resolution? It’s great to tell a bully to calm down, but you want either them to calm down (which doesn’t seem likely here) or more reasonable people to take over.

To be honest, we don't know where this is going. We all want a peaceful outcome.

The next elections are in 2023 so there is no near resolution by the ballot.

There is over 50% unemployment, mega inflation, currency devaluation etc and yet a consistent clampdown on anything deemed progressive by the government.

The truth is, if anything happens to the peace of Nigeria and if only 5%, of its occupants get displaced (10million people) the world will feel it's impact in a very negative way.

Unfortunately, thanks to COVID, Brexit et al, no one is paying attention so the government assumes it has it has a freehand.

Unfortunately for them, our population is very young, quite adept at adapting, innovative etc. So I do not see us backing down. Despite the worst of policies, there has been unprecedented growth in our tech startup scene (YC can testify)

So for now, we watch.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com