Nightly Nuance - June 8, 2021

Hello, my friends. Today, I want to talk about what happens when a government leader gets personally offended by a social media platform, decides that platform spreads too much "fake news," and desires to stop dissent from fomenting on that platform. Sound familiar? 

In Nigeria (the world's seventh most populous country with an emerging economy), the government has completely banned Twitter indefinitely. For everyone. For any reason. As in, reporters can't use Twitter to find or share news. As in, law enforcement is supposed to arrest people who tweet. 

If you have the kind of love/hate relationship that I have with Twitter (or perhaps you're more hate/hate or indifferent to it), this might not seem like the biggest deal to you. But, Twitter is where a ton of political activism and organizing takes place. Twitter is where lots of businesses make money. Twitter is where a lot of opportunity exists beyond your nation's borders. Twitter is where it's easiest to share what's happening at a protest in real time. Twitter is where comedy develops in its own language. A government deciding to shut down the entirety of that experience for over 200 million people to suppress dissent is a big deal. 

Thanks, as always, for being here with me to think about a wide variety of topics! 

Resources: 

BBC 

The Guardian  

Foreign Policy -- this is the piece from Kola Tubosun 

Washington Post  

Global Citizen 

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