Ethiopia Moves to Phase Out Facebook, Twitter, Others
It is a matter of time, Facebook, Twitter other microblogging social media platforms will cease to exist in Ethiopia following the government move to replace the social network services with local operators.
African leaders are becoming restless with the operation of foreign social media platforms, especially in the quest to balancing facts from fake information by some of the citizens.
Ethiopia has begun developing its own social media platform to rival Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp, though it does not plan to block the global services, the state communications security agency said on Monday.
Ethiopia has been engulfed since last year in an armed conflict pitting the federal government against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which controls the Tigray region in the country’s north.
Supporters of both sides have waged a parallel war of words on social media.
The government wants its local platform to “replace” Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp and Zoom, the director-general of the Information Network Security Agency (INSA), Shumete Gizaw, said.
Shumete accused Facebook of deleting posts and user accounts which he said were “disseminating the true reality about Ethiopia”.
International human rights groups have criticized the Ethiopian government for unexplained shutdowns to social media services including Facebook and WhatsApp in the past year.
The government has not commented on those shutdowns.
Facebook’s Africa spokesperson, Kezia Anim-Addo, declined to comment on Ethiopia’s plans and did not respond immediately to a query about Shumete’s accusations.
But in June, days before national elections, Facebook said it had removed a network of fake accounts in Ethiopia targeting domestic users which it linked to individuals associated with INSA, which is responsible for monitoring telecommunications and the internet.
Twitter declined to comment. Zoom did not immediately reply to a comment request.
Shumete declined to specify a timeline, budget and other details, but told Reuters: “The rationale behind developing technology with local capacity is clear … Why do you think China is using WeChat?”
He said Ethiopia had the local expertise to develop the platforms and would not hire outsiders to help.
The social messaging app WeChat is owned by China-headquartered Tencent Holdings 700, is widely used in the country and is considered to be a strong tool by Chinese authorities for monitoring its population.
Shumete also referred Reuters to comments he made on Friday to a local media outlet in which he accused Facebook of blocking users who were “preaching national unity and peace”.
He also told Al-Ain Amharic that authorities were working on the platform to replace Facebook and Twitter, while a trial has already been completed of a platform to replace WhatsApp and Zoom and that platform will soon be operational.
Last week members of the Federal Trade Commission voted in favor of renewing its antitrust lawsuit against social media giant Facebook. This comes after a federal judge dismissed the commission’s original lawsuit ruling that it did not have sufficient evidence to support Facebook participating in unlawful monopolization.
This new complaint asserts that Facebook bought up rival platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp because they were failing to keep up with a transition to mobile platforms and audiences.
Lately, talks of antitrust suits against today’s big tech companies are frequent and have support on both sides of the political aisle, but it is not clear if the US federal government ever succeed in curbing the power of big tech.
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