Twitter ban, koo opens up. How will this play in Nigeriann business environment

[Gozie51]

On Wednesday 2 of June, the Nigerian President made a tweet which many people consider to be threat to genocide and this led to the deleting of the tweet on Friday by Twitter. To Twitter such post violates its “abusive behavior” policy and that led to deleting the post.

Such post by the president was seen as reminding the southeasterns in Nigeria  the anguish of the civil war between the Nigerian government (which president buhari was a commander) , and Biafra where about 3 million souls of the southeasterns were lost in 1967-70.

This is the content of theTweet

“Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War,” he wrote in the now-deleted post. Those “who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand.”

IMO , the tweet isn't really addressing the issue why the group is agitating but it is rather a reminder of the gruesome killings of the souls in the region.

So what do you think about the president tweet and the action of twitter to pull down the tweet which has resulted into consequent banning of twitter in Nigeria.

 Although can be accessed through VPN.

Now, a new blog.  Koo has opened in Nigeria to replace tweeter shortly after it was ban. What do you think the financial losses will go ? Though banning of tweeter is a threat to freedom of speech and association and some legal bodies have petitioned the Nigerian government in ECOWAS

[fiulpro]

Banning of Twitter ?
I have not heard of this but the Nigerian government is becoming more and more corrupted in my stance. They are not only banning cryptocurrencies but at the same time they are also banning Twitter, maybe to prevent people to associate themselves with political crimes and other things but it takes away their freedom to express themselves, on the other hand Koo might be something that is controlled greatly by the government, therefore they might track you down so it might not be a good idea to discuss your financial situation and at the same time your ideas. What the Nigerian president did was definitely wrong but I feel like everyone on the twitter usually uses their freedom in a weird way.
There will be financial losses 100%
There will even be public uproar
I hope they consider this decision and change it soon.

[avikz]

Authoritarian governments around the world is now targeting Twitter for their support towards freedom of speech. Same thing is happening in India as well. The fascist central government led by Modi has started harassing twitter officials as they have deleted some of their fake propaganda tweets. Nigeria is no less than an authoritarian government so no wonder they have adopted koo app which is again made in India by the propaganda lover techies.

It will only worsen the business credibility of those countries and nothing else. Less companies will be interested in conducting business and unemployment will rise. Poors will be getting poorer.

[bryant.coleman]

Twitter got what they deserved. On one hand they tolerate genocidal tweets from various Jihadist and leftist elements, and on the other hand they block genuine tweets from the center and center-right. Let's not forget the role they played during the POTUS election of 2020, by banning any news related to the laptop of Hunter Biden. I am glad that Nigeria didn't fell into this trap and stopped Twitter trying to implement the regime change. Next will be India. There they have been trying to implement regime change for so long.

[just_Alice]

The post did not directly have a threatening element, but the threat was clearly implied, and I think Twitter had all the right to delete it. You go with the platform - you have to respect their rules indicated in ToS, if you do not - accept the consequences.
And I think it is very unfair that Nigeria banned Twitter after that. Basically, the president messed up and now the whole population suffers from that.
On the other hand, nothing new...

[Sithara007]

The post did not directly have a threatening element, but the threat was clearly implied, and I think Twitter had all the right to delete it. You go with the platform - you have to respect their rules indicated in ToS, if you do not - accept the consequences.
And I think it is very unfair that Nigeria banned Twitter after that. Basically, the president messed up and now the whole population suffers from that.
On the other hand, nothing new...

The rules must be same for everyone. Twitter claims that it is an intermediary. However, recent actions suggest that it is not the case. Their actions are clearly politically motivated. Twitter hardly ever takes any action against objectionable tweets, if they come from the left-wing users (including the Islamist extremists). A perfect example is the tweet from Mahathir Mohamad. His twitter account is intact despite the fact that he tweeted in support of the genocide of French people. This is his tweet:

"Muslims have a right to be angry and kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past"

Now Twitter is perfectly OK with such tweets, but they suspended Donald Trump for something much more moderate. If they want to block people, then they need to do it without any bias. Else it is political intervention and many more countries will follow the example set by Nigeria.

[Maestro75]

Banning of Twitter ?
I have not heard of this but the Nigerian government is becoming more and more corrupted in my stance. They are not only banning cryptocurrencies but at the same time they are also banning Twitter, maybe to prevent people to associate themselves with political crimes and other things but it takes away their freedom to express themselves, on the other hand Koo might be something that is controlled greatly by the government, therefore they might track you down so it might not be a good idea to discuss your financial situation and at the same time your ideas. What the Nigerian president did was definitely wrong but I feel like everyone on the twitter usually uses their freedom in a weird way.
There will be financial losses 100%
There will even be public uproar
I hope they consider this decision and change it soon.

All you said here are correct and on point. The Nigerian political class are very incompetent and corrupt. Early in February the government banned cryptocurrency only to unban it a month later because it could not achieve its purpose. It is the same way that this Twitter ban will also be unbanned. Already Nigerians are turning to VPN to assess Twitter and proving they have more wisdom than the government. Losses are already taken even a few days after the senseless ban.

Again, OP or whoever that is in Nigeria should stay away from that Koo app or site. It may be a way of government monitoring you.

[uneng]

There are no good guys on this story. The government of Nigeria is tyrant the same way the big techs are. Each of them have their own political agenda and in the middle there are the sheep (the people) who pick one side or another, but are never benefited in the end. People are doomed anyway, because they think and act like sheep, always picking the less worse side, instead of aiming the excellency.
Twitter and freedom of speech don't fit on the same sentence. For them it's interesting to stand against Nigeria's government right now, but they say nothing about many other criminals profiles posting on their platform, like mentioned above by another forum members. Not only terrorists are allowed on twitter, but regional mafias, gangsters from different countries as well. The point is that these are protected by their agenda as victims of the society.

[dothebeats]

Nigeria is one of those countries in the modern age wherein the government refuses advancement of its people just so they can keep on siphoning the public coffers for themselves. It's no surprise that there will come to a point wherein they would ban social media and big tech that promotes free speech to their citizens in order to not let any uprising or any public sentiment go against the government. Whatever is happening in Nigeria is actually exacerbated by the people's lack of knowledge and information on more pressing matters, and Twitter can somehow help bridge that gap yet we know that twitter isn't really one of the good guys too.

[Hydrogen]

Some african nations imposed social media taxes on africans that use american social media platforms.

Uganda imposes WhatsApp and Facebook tax 'to stop gossip

May 2018

Uganda's parliament has passed a law to impose a controversial tax on people using social media platforms.

It imposes a 200 shilling [$0.05, £0.04] daily levy on people using internet messaging platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Viber and Twitter.

President Yoweri Museveni had pushed for the changes, arguing that social media encouraged gossip.

The law should come into effect on 1 July but there remain doubts about how it will be implemented.

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 services.

State Minister for Finance David Bahati told parliament that the tax increases were needed to help Uganda pay off its growing national debt.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-44315675

Ugandans were said to have largely avoided the tax by using VPNs, proxies and anonymizers.

Nigeria likewise may not have the IT infrastructure in place to enforce a social media ban. The way that uganda was unable to enforce their social media tax.

There is a long history to governments deterring anonymous bloggers as independant sources of information. And a long history of independance movements utilizing social media as a communications and organizing platform. There are trends and a history to things like social media that are not being acknowledged in this discussion of what fair use of social media on a global scale is.

[wack slacker]

Russia has warned that social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are taking action to direct public opinion with inaccurate content. Russia requires these social networks to have content censorship appropriate to the country.
Nigeria has banned Twitter for its crimes related to racism and genocide. It is the right thing to do to warn other social networks that are exercising their power.
Business in Nigeria continues and businesses must change to accommodate the policies of the national government. I believe Facebook and other social networks will be the next places to benefit after the government's Twitter ban.

[hugeblack]

Governments have tried all methods of silencing and failed you, except for blocking the Internet, it is difficult to find a way to prevent the masses from using social media or any website.
The economic environment in Nigeria will not be affected. Few economic activities place importance on personal and media freedoms, and few care about them.
In general, the reaction reflects the extent to which the ruling regime controls the situation and the ability to pass decisions quickly.

[Gozie51]

The economic environment in Nigeria will not be affected. Few economic activities place importance on personal and media freedoms, and few care about them.

Hello hugeblack , the ban is really going to affect the Nigerian business economy and it surely will because Nigeria business startups are all moving into the social media to reach out to customers and twitter is a giant in this space because it covers a whole lot of population. It is a wrong step for the government to take such decision to shut out youths and people who don't have government jobs but have ways to survive through the social media. Of course there are different things you can do on social media for profit and convenience without stepping out from the house. For travels and booking of tickets, all these are done online line by businesses involved in it.

you can Google for more on the economic effect

The internet and social media have revolutionalized business in Nigeria. I am old enough to recall driving to the airport in person or to a “travel agency” to buy a ticket to fly on a plane. Today I go online, buy a ticket, select a seat, book a hotel and hire a car while in bed via apps on my phone. If I don’t like the service I can go online to Facebook and Twitter and complain. Almost every organization has a social media team and social media spending is not a traditional media channel used by companies and politicians. Can you imagine the covid response, the dissemination of information without Social media? Without Twitter?

Check this quote below

Now to the business impact, a sizeable portion of the youth population earn their livelihood off Twitter, some simply by being attack dogs or mouthpiece for politicians and the government. Clearly income for those youths will be lost no thanks to the ban.

[Sterbens]

all the propaganda problems that occurred in the past. They should not have been brought up again in order to protect the feelings of the victims' families who are still there today.
What has been done by Twitter tends to be in order to prevent it from causing bigotry, which has been getting better for a long time. should be the president, especially the president of Nigeria, must be able to filter these words. no matter how the words that come out of a president will have a long tail. so naturally it would lead to worse propaganda.

The President of Nigeria should focus more on building their economic infrastructure for a better future. instead of causing continuous unrest.

[GeorgeJohn]

This information is all over the news, and it's very bad that Nigeria government made an open announcements of Twitter via ban, this is absolutely bad system of leadership, because from the information obtained, it's because of the president of Nigeria tweet been removed from Twitter social media platform that leads to this public announcement of Twitter banned.
But is not right for the masses to suffer because of problem of president with social media, so i think people of Nigeria have to kick against the ban, because some people business accelerate through social media especially with help of Twitter.

[Similificator]

In my opinion, the decision of twitter to delete such a tweet is the right decision. Although it may have been too late already. The post is really expressing some kind of threat and thus shouldn't have been allowed to be posted or stay for long. This is why most countries are targetting twitter for this shortcoming. But on the other side, the freedom of speech is really important. All in all, I still do not think that this is enough reason to ban twitter. This is just somewhat childish.

[teosanru]

Actually problem is that these developing Economies that have got some stupid extremist governments have started to think that social media is making it difficult for them to maneuver the brains of common folks. Ironical thing is that these governments themselves used these platforms to gain popularity but now when users are using these platforms to spread some negativity against them they are behaving like 12-year-old children. Nigeria isn't the only case, Some similar sentiments grew in India too but thankfully the government isn't that bad here that it takes decisions without giving things a second thought.

But for Twitter too, I think Twitter has been crossing some lines, Acting against false information is okay, but being hyper-aggressive in banning tweets and accounts of leaders is a height of stupidity. If the democratically elected President of a country does a tweet, which isn't a piece of false information, there is no way that Twitter should ban it even if Twitter thinks it incites violence. It's the responsibility of the President himself to maintain peace in the country, not Twitter. He will be accountable for his words, Twitter isn't a decentralized platform afterall.

[Fortify]

On Wednesday 2 of June, the Nigerian President made a tweet which many people consider to be threat to genocide and this led to the deleting of the tweet on Friday by Twitter. To Twitter such post violates its “abusive behavior” policy and that led to deleting the post.

Such post by the president was seen as reminding the southeasterns in Nigeria  the anguish of the civil war between the Nigerian government (which president buhari was a commander) , and Biafra where about 3 million souls of the southeasterns were lost in 1967-70.

This is the content of theTweet

“Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War,” he wrote in the now-deleted post. Those “who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand.”

It's a bit of a strange situation really, because while no leader should be able to make violent threats, if that was the entirety of the tweet then I'm not sure it even qualifies considering some of the other messages that twitter has ignored in the past. It is extremely petty for the Nigerian government to take the step of banning Twitter and shows that they are leaning towards more undemocratic ways. However that needs to be seen in the context of long term barely concealed corruption and perpetuate mismanagement of the country for the sole benefit of the elites who sit at the top. You just have to look at previous presidents and politicians who have looted hundreds of millions out of government coffers to see that they are primarily looking after themselves. Hopefully the Nigerian people will see through this shallow attempt at self preservation and deny further attempts at censorship.

[evilgreed]

               When things go as far as banning social media sites that gives power to freedom of speech, you just know that something isn't right. No matter the reason this should never be done. Not unless it gives a sense of state emergency level threat. But with such petty reasons? I do not think that banning twitter is worth all the unfavorable after effects that may emerge out of this decision. Twitter is the best way to promote almost anything and losing this means of advertising will be very detrimental for businesses. Not to mention the bad image that the leaders of Nigeria is showing. What they are doing right now is just the same as looking for a gun to shoot themselves. They should really start thinking this through more thoroughly.

[Upgrade00]

 When things go as far as banning social media sites that gives power to freedom of speech, you just know that something isn't right. No matter the reason this should never be done. Not unless it gives a sense of state emergency level threat. But with such petty reasons?

The Nigerian government has been tilting towards dictatorship with several attempts to undermine democracy and the rule of law. Twitter was banned because a tweet of the president was deleted, but that seems like only a means to an end; social media regulations has been suggested and planned for a very long time before now and the government just used an excuse to fulfill their purpose.

Op, I assume by Koo, you're referring to the crowwe app opened by a member of the government's team. It is currently no longer available on Play store after a lot d Nigerians has given it negative feedback, although the creators claim they took it down themselves for development issues. Seems unlikely...