Current Events > Nigeria bans Twitter after company deletes President Buhari's tweet

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https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/04/africa/nigeria-suspends-twitter-operations-intl/index.html

The Nigerian government says it has "indefinitely suspended" Twitter's operations in the country, the Ministry of Information and Culture announced in a statement on Friday. "The Federal Government has suspended, indefinitely, the operations of the microblogging and social networking service, Twitter, in Nigeria," it read. The statement, which was posted on the ministry's official Twitter handle on Friday evening, accused the American social media company of allowing its platform to be used "for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria's corporate existence." The suspension comes two days after Twitter deleted a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari that was widely perceived as offensive.

In that tweet on Tuesday, the Nigerian leader threatened to deal with people in the country's southeast, who he blames for the recurring attacks on public infrastructure in the region. "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. Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand," Buhari wrote in the now-deleted tweet, referring to the brutal two-year Nigeria-Biafra war, which killed an estimated one to three million people, mostly from the Igbo tribe in the eastern part of the country between 1967-1970. The tweet was deleted Wednesday after many Nigerians flagged it to Twitter. Information Minister Lai Mohammed criticized Twitter's action and accused the social media giant of "double standards."

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Im sure Twitter is devastated

imagine if Biden did this when trump was banned

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Time to talk shit about them

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Politicians want so much special treatment from social media. They're so detached from the people of their countries. They should be treated exactly like any regular person.

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Too bad the rest of the world doesn't follow suit and put that cesspool out of business.

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EmbraceOfDeath posted...

Too bad the rest of the world doesn't follow suit and put that cesspool out of business.

Yeah everyone should start regulating Internet. Great idea. Is this China?

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hockeybub89 posted...

Yeah everyone should start regulating Internet. Great idea. Is this China?

Nah its Trump.

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Guess I won't be able to contact my prince Nigerian uncle anymore :(

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In that tweet on Tuesday, the Nigerian leader threatened to deal with people in the country's southeast

buhari was complicit in the slaughter and disenfrancisement of the inhabitants of the southeast region in the 1960s, and now he runs the country.

though i have reservations about corporate censorship on twitter's part, buhari's threats really should not be taken lightly, whether by his country or by the international community.

if there is a defense of twitter's action, it's that there's is a case to be made that the tweet could perhaps be construed as an indirect incitement to violence, if not simply because of the pogroms his faction presided over during the leadup to the civil war.

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Politicians shouldn't be policymaking via twitter anyway. It was trashy when Trump did it.

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