November 2019, Twitter chief executive Jack Patrick Dorsey wrote at an airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to relocate “Africa” for six months in 2020. His high month-long trip to the continent, where he toured Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, and Ethiopia, was over, and billions were in mourning. “Africa will predict the future (especially bitcoin!)” He wrote. Covid could block his trip, although in 2020 he went to visit Jay-Z in the Hamptons, and Hawaii, and on a boat, and in January 2021 he reportedly decided to ban Donald Trump from Twitter while on vacation in French Polynesia. . Then, two years and two days after his return to Dorsey, he announced his return to Africa stepped down as CEO. We did not know where “Africa” probably meant. We know that his frustrations and failures in the three of the four countries he visited for the first time will have a profound impact on his heritage on the continent.
In the West, Twitter under Dorsey rule from 2015 to 2021 is often seen as a dangerous, hostile, burning fire. But what the West found is the Twitter version of the platinum. It is a type made by people who see their development problems in depth because the problems are their own. False stories, hate speech, and fraud on the platform are the worst in the world and Dorsey’s legacy in Africa is more careless and deceptive than its western heritage.
In April 2021, nearly 15 years after Twitter became global, the company announced it would open its first presence in Africa, the regional capital of Accra, Ghana. “Twitter is now on the continent,” Dorsey wrote on Twitter Ghanaian emoji emoji. However its availability is limited. The Twitter-enabled jobs listed in Accra were mostly for advertising, engineering, and communications. It is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving the post. Instead, the Twitter content group in sub-Saharan Africa is based in Europe. With Google and Facebook in front of them, it became clear that this new development would not include helping Africans protect the right to freedom of expression or to retaliate against authoritarian regimes. Twitter’s Africa HQ is not about Africans. It is a colonial group, set up to ensure that the data and funds that Twitter from the continent is sustained. And the office limits are tested several times a year because Twitter was used to sow dissatisfaction in a number of African countries.
Dorsey treated Nigeria mainly as an easy relationship. In 2020, many Nigerians have appreciated his tweets calling for him to donate money to end police brutality (#EndSARS). But his insistence on this was not coincidental as the same Twitter seems to be ignoring repeated visits from Nigerian journalists, investigators, and freedom fighters to raise flags or ban many. fraud and #EndSARS false claims and other atrocities that were rampant on the platform. Then, two months after the opening of the Twitter account in Africa, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari banned Twitter in the country for four months. This was after the platform removed one of Buhari’s tweets for violating platform rules on harassment, but a spokesman for the President soon realized that the ban was more than just a tweet. “There has been a lot of trouble on television in Nigeria, where fake news and false news has spread all over the world,” a spokesman sent an email to Bloomberg. “Every so often, the company ran away from the case.” It is difficult to agree with the controlling speaker, but he had a point.
There is probably nowhere in Africa where Dorsey’s Twitter failed more than in Ethiopia. As in Nigeria, the tower is found to be in a difficult position with the authoritarian government that has been making internet disruptions amid growing growing civil war. Last month, the tower announced it was blocking its presence in Ethiopia, apparently to curb destructive threats. “Initiating violence or insulting people is against our laws,” the company did not mention in a tweet. “We hope this will reduce the risk of alliances that could lead to violence or injury.” This is an amazing, thought-provoking concept. Mistake: Although Dorsey would not have accepted this, removing the moving part was admitting wrongdoing. Twitter realized that it could not cope with the growing number of hate crimes. But instead of admitting that he designed the Trends algorithms to be more flexible and to allow hate speech to spread, or to realize that he could deliberately try to fix the format, he criticized the Ethiopian people (using the way they were designed). Once again, Twitter has borrowed from the colonialist book: Strengthen the damage that the colonists brought to Africa for Africans.
There is a tendency for the Twitter problem; it is also destroying the people of Kenya. In my research with the Mozilla Foundation, I researched how Twitter algorithms have helped allow disinformation-for-hire companies to do better in Kenya, as well as in Kenya journalists to suffer from many waves. When the Pandora Papers sued the President of Kenya for having millions of dollars stored in a maritime account, fake news outlets used Twitter to spread public complaints. When I share my findings on Twitter, the best way the platform has done is with the regular method, stopping or deleting the destruction of accounts that I and my fellow researchers have identified but do not fully understand, if so. , would prevent further propaganda from spreading.
