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A Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator has applauded Nigeria’s recent suspension of Twitter operations in the country. Nebojsa Malic, a senior writer at RT, says the African country is teaching the US a lesson in how to handle the tyranny of big technology companies.
“It took Nigeria two days to respond to Twitter’s censorship of its president with a ban on the platform. It may only amount to a symbolic gesture, but it sends a clear message to San Francisco that this kind of behavior by Big Tech will not be tolerated,” writes Malic in a piece that is now viral.
“Buhari’s critics have argued that the ban is “not in keeping with democracy, the rule of law, and the independence of the media.” But Twitter’s censorship is? Who’s in charge here, an elected government of a sovereign country, or a corporation on the other side of the world? That’s really the question here.”
Nigeria suspended Twitter’s operations in Nigeria after it accused the social media platform of double standards. The micro blogging site had days earlier deleted a tweet by President Buhari for violating its Rules.
The Serbian-American journalist wants the world to interrogate the increasing despotism with which Big Tech like Facebook and Twitter decide who to censor and when to.
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Citing how Big Tech censored former US President Donald Trump, Malic notes: “Yet most of the US media and civil libertarian groups see nothing wrong with this, and are even arguing that such censorship – using corporations as proxies for the government – isn’t violating the First Amendment.”
For the blogger, the world should not only focus on how governments respond to censorship by Big Tech but how Big Tech is increasingly becoming absolute power in what constitutes FREE SPEECH.
“The entire democratic world seems to have no trouble seeing how menacing it is for democracy to have our political discourse policed by Silicon Valley monopolists, while pressured by political parties. Only US liberals & their journalists can’t see it. They’re pro-censorship,” the journalist quoted June 4, 2021 tweet by Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) to underscore concerns in various quarters.
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COVER IMAGE: New York Post
