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Fresh from censoring select voices before and after US election,
Twitter howls ‘HUMAN RIGHTS’ as Uganda shuts down social media
12 Jan 2021 23:15
© Reuters / Abubaker Lubowa
After banning the US president and other voices challenging Joe Biden’s election victory, Twitter is aghast that Uganda has shut down the social media conversation two days before voters there go to the polls.
“We’re hearing reports that internet service providers are being ordered to block social media and messaging apps,” Twitter said on Tuesday. “We strongly condemn internet shutdowns. They are hugely harmful [and] violate basic human rights and the principles of the open internet.”
With tens of thousands of conservative voices, including President Donald Trump, being banned by Twitter and other Big Tech platforms in recent days, the irony of the company’s statement was not lost on critics. “Shutting down voices online is a violation of human rights in Uganda but necessary to protect democracy in America,” Blaze TV host Lauren Chen tweeted.
Media critic Mark Dice said, “Maybe they don’t want Twitter interfering in their election like you’ve done in the US.”
In fact, Uganda’s government ordered a national social-media blackout essentially to level the playing field after Facebook and Twitter took down accounts supporting President Yoweri Museveni and Uganda’s ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party.
“This is unfortunate, but it’s unavoidable,” Museveni said on Tuesday in a nationwide address. “There’s no way anybody can come and play around with our country... We cannot tolerate this arrogance of anybody coming to decide for us who is good and who is bad.”
Twitter acknowledged that it suspended an undisclosed number of Ugandan accounts targeting the country’s January 14 election earlier this week, “in close coordination with our peers.” Facebook shut down allegedly duplicate accounts linked to Uganda’s Ministry of Information after saying they were used to comment on content, impersonate users and make posts appear more popular.
The 76-year-old Museveni, who has ruled Uganda since 1986, said that if a social media platform is going to operate in Uganda, “it should be used equitably by everybody who wants to use it” – a sentiment that millions of Americans would like to see applied in the US. “If you want to take sides against the NRM, then that group will not operate in Uganda,” he added. “Uganda is ours. It’s not anybody’s.”
How is the internet to be used equitably when the government has a department whose purpose is to flood the internet with pro-Gov't propaganda?
Twitter blasted the timing of the shutdown, saying, “Access to information and freedom of expression, including the public conversation on Twitter, is never more important than during democratic processes, particularly elections.”
Observers suggested the company may be lacking in self-awareness. Author Anuraag Saxena quipped: “What kind of monsters would block the right to free speech? Oh wait.” Social media editor Jessica O’Donnell said, “Are there no mirrors at Twitter?”
A spokesman for Museveni told the AP that Facebook was interfering in Uganda’s electoral process, and the unilateral shutdown of accounts was evidence of “outside support.”
The US State Department has called on Uganda to ensure a “free, fair, credible and peaceful” election and has accused Museveni’s administration of using excessive force against opposition protesters. “Security officials responsible for the excessive force must be held to account, and candidates must be afforded freedom of movement and access to media,” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement last month. He added that “we are paying close attention to the actions of individuals who interfere in the democratic process and will not hesitate to consider serious consequences for those responsible for election-related violence and oppression.”
Dozens of protesters have reportedly been killed during crackdowns on rallies for opposition candidate Bobi Wine.
Museveni apologized for the inconvenience caused by Uganda’s social media shutdown, but said that after Facebook failed to give a proper explanation of its account suspensions, the government was forced to take action.
Poland slams social media deplatforming of Trump as government readies
anti-censorship law
14 Jan 2021 16:03
The Polish government has decried social media platforms’ (mis)handling of US President Donald Trump’s accounts as Warsaw prepares to pass its own legislation to stop ideological censorship.
Facebook’s decision to remove Trump’s account was politically motivated, hypocritical, and “amounts to censorship,” Deputy Justice Minister Sebastian Kaleta told local media.
Under the country’s new anti-censorship law, “removing lawful content would directly violate the law, and this will have to be respected by the platforms that operate in Poland,” he explained to Polish outlet Rzeczpospolita.
PM Mateusz Morawiecki made similar comments earlier this week, though he did not mention the US president by name. “Algorithms or the owners of corporate giants should not decide which views are right and which are not,” he wrote on Facebook.
There can be no consent to censorship.
“Censorship of free speech, which is the domain of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, is now returning in the form of a new, commercial mechanism to combat those who think differently,” Morawiecki continued.
The new anti-censorship law, first unveiled last month, will allow users whose content is taken down by the Big Tech companies to petition a special court if they believe the content did not violate Polish law and should be restored. The user may first file a complaint to the platform, which has 24 hours to restore the ‘offending’ content if they agree it does not violate Polish law.
If the platform refuses, however, the user has 48 hours to petition a court newly created for this purpose. Should the court find in favor of the censored user over a seven-day consideration period, the censoring platform can be fined up to €1.8 million.
Polish government figures, especially those on the right wing of the political spectrum, have had their own struggles with Facebook censorship in the past. The platform kicked Konfederacja party MP Janusz Korwin-Mikke off the site in November despite some 780,000 followers, alleging he had repeatedly violated “community standards.”
Poland is out of step with the mostly, far-left EU
Morawiecki has called for the EU to adopt similar rules for governing social media, though the multinational group’s current trajectory seems to lean toward punishing platforms for not removing ‘offensive’ content quickly enough.
France, is finding less and less in common with EU values
However, individual countries such as France are starting to push back against the dominance of Big Tech. French finance minister Bruno Le Maire recently referred to the tech titans as a “digital oligarchy” and “one of the threats” to democracy.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel called it “problematic” while Thierry Breton, the EU Commission’s internal market commissioner, went as far as to compare it to 9/11 in the sense that it led to a “paradigm shift” in perception of global security when it comes to the “threat” unregulated tech companies can pose to democracies.
Belarusian authorities seek to give journalists 3-year jail term for alleged role
in protests against embattled leader Lukashenko
14 Jan 2021 18:05
People, including pensioners, take part in an opposition rally to demand the resignation of Belarusian President
Alexander Lukashenko and to protest against police violence in Minsk, Belarus November 30, 2020.
© REUTERS / Stringer; (inset) Daria Chultsova © вконтакте24.рф
Two young journalists could be handed prison sentences over accusations that they participated in opposition rallies in Belarus, despite their insistence that they were covering events as reporters for a Western-backed news site.
Nadzeya Antonik, an officer of the Frunzenski Court in Minsk, announced on Facebook earlier this week that a criminal case had been filed against Daria Chultsova, a camerawoman from Belsat TV, and Ekaterina Andreeva, one of the network’s presenters. They stand accused of “organizing and preparing actions that grossly violate public order,” charges which carry up to three years incarceration.
According to the Warsaw-based channel, which is bankrolled by Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the pair were arrested after live-streaming a demonstration on Minsk’s so-called ‘Square of Changes’. The protests followed an outcry after a resident of the capital, Roman Bondarenko, was allegedly beaten to death after being picked up by police outside his home on the plaza.
According to Andreeva’s husband, Igor Ilyash, who also works for Belsat, the charges have been commonly used against those reporting on events in the country since the beginning of the unrest last summer. “It’s a completely absurd situation,” he said. “She practically spent the entire protest in that apartment [where they had been filming], she didn’t leave there, she couldn’t take part or coordinate. The very fact that she ran a live broadcast is proof.”
Opposition figurehead Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who stood against veteran leader Alexander Lukashenko in the country’s presidential elections last year, has since weighed in on the case from Lithuania, where she fled in the days following the vote. The one-time candidate, who has declared herself the rightful president of Belarus, urged her followers to send cards and letters to Chultsova, who she describes as a “political prisoner.”
While many foreign journalists, who are required to register with authorities in Minsk, had their credentials revoked last year, a number of native Belarusians have maintained a flow of information out of the country. However, several of the outlets that employ them are based outside the country or funded from overseas. Some are Russian, while others are Western-funded, such as NEXTA and Belsat.tv, which are based across the border in Poland. Lukashenko’s government bans media organizations that take funds from “foreign legal entities,” and does not distinguish between their journalists and protesters.
Belarus has been rocked by mass demonstrations and strikes since August, when Lukashenko claimed victory in his sixth presidential election since first taking office in 1994. However, the opposition and many international observers claim that the vote was rigged in his favor, and hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets to demand a new poll. Lukashenko has said that those forming the crowds are Western-backed “puppets.”
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