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Russia Says It Will Partially Restrict Facebook, Accuses Platform of Censorship

By
Samuel Nwite
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0

US tech companies have managed to stay neutral since Russia invaded Ukraine on Thursday. Unlike several organizations following the trend of US-led sanctions on Russia by severing ties with either businesses from Russia or the Russian government itself, the Big Tech, especially social media platforms have shown little or no sign of taking a side.

But the story is beginning to change as the conflict escalates. In times of war, governments aim to push media propaganda using state-run media outlets and other platforms they could bend. Social media companies wield enormous global media influence that put them on the spotlight – and they may be forced to either allow government propaganda or get the boot. Facebook has begun to receive that treatment.

Russia said Friday that it would partially limit access to Facebook within its borders over what it alleges is censorship of four state news outlets.

In its announcement, the country’s communications regulator said it asked Facebook earlier in the week to remove the restrictions and explain its reasoning for them but did not hear back. It also accused the company of various other undetailed human rights and freedoms abuses.

Per Insider, Facebook said it had refused requests to stop fact-checking posts from certain outlets.

“Russian authorities ordered us to stop the independent fact-checking and labelling of content posted on Facebook by four Russian state-owned media organizations. We refused. As a result, they have announced they will be restricting the use of our services,” Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president for global affairs and communications, tweeted on Thursday.

https://twitter.com/nickclegg/status/1497279120853590025?t=zN1z9FPJI_u5lzYCgzZ78w&s=19

It’s not clear if the planned restriction will impact other apps in Meta’s portfolio, like WhatsApp or Instagram.

Ukraine has been under serious unprovoked attack by Russia, as President Vladimir Putin flexes its military muscle to enforce his political will. Ukraine has picked up arms to fend off the heightened aggression which is expected to advance to more cities in the country in coming days.

The conflict, which brewed a lot of tension in the past weeks, became a full-scale war on Thursday after Putin recognized the independence of two breakaway regions of Ukraine – Donetsk and Luhansk. Putin said he moved into Ukraine to stop unproved genocide against the separatists.

More than 137 Ukrainians were dead as of early Friday morning, and one official said Friday would be the “hardest day.” The Ukrainian government claimed over 2,000 Russian troops have been killed.

Against this backdrop, the desire to control the narrative is forcing Russia to take aim at social media. According to Politico, a handful of Russia-backed media outlets have posted stories on Facebook and Twitter containing false claims that Ukrainian military forces were the ones who launched unprovoked assaults on Russian-allied troops.

Social media companies have been under intense scrutiny over what they allowed to be in their platforms, especially in times of crisis. Google’s YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and others have been pressured to pour more resources into handling false information related to the pandemic, the 2020 presidential election, and political disinformation more broadly.

Evans the Billionaire kidnapper sentenced to life imprisonment: The Nigerian laws on Kidnapping

By
Stanley Alieke
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The Lagos state high court sitting in Ikeja, on Friday, the 25th of February, 2022 finally sentenced the popular billionaire Kidnapper Evans and two of his accomplices to life imprisonment.

Evans was arrested in a sting operation after investigation proved that he and his cohorts were the masterminds behind the kidnapping of Mr Donatius Dunu, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Maydon Pharmaceuticals Ltd on February 14, 2017, and a ransom of €223,000 was collected from his family. Evans and his accomplices before then had been accused of other numerous kidnap cases and they were subjects of police investigation until he was busted and arrested with his gang. 

What the Nigerian laws say about the crime of Kidnapping and abduction for ransom:

The crime of kidnapping was duly provided for in the criminal code act in S.364 of and it reads thus:

S.364. Kidnapping

Any person who?

(1) unlawfully imprisons any person, and takes him out of Nigeria without his consent; or

(2) unlawfully imprisons any person within Nigeria in such a manner as to prevent him from applying to a court for his release or from discovering to any other person the place where he is imprisoned, or in such a manner as to prevent any person entitled to have access to him from discovering the place where he is imprisoned,

is guilty of a felony and is liable to imprisonment for ten years.

In the criminal code, the crime of kidnapping carries the punishment of ten years imprisonment but some  state legislators and even federal legislators have in some many plenaries argued that the punishment of 10 years jail term for a kidnapper is not efficient to punish a kidnapper and to deter other prospective kidnappers from committing the crime and this led to some states and federal legislators proposing and even passing a bills/laws to provide stiffer punishments for the crime of kidnapping.

Lagos state is one of the states that are openly against the 10 years jail term for kidnappers provided in the criminal code. Though the federal law which is the Criminal code already provides for the crime of kidnapping and its punishment, Lagos state have passed a state law that provides for stiffer punishments for kidnappers; stiffer than the punishment of 10 years jail term provided in S.364 of the criminal code.

The Lagos State promulgated a law in 2019 captioned “The Lagos State Kidnapping Prohibition Law, 2019” and Section 3(3) of this law punishes kidnapping with a jail term of 25 years to life imprisonment and when the kidnapper is liable for the death of the hostage, he will be liable for for death penalty as provided in s.2(2) of the law.

The senate has also proposed a bill to amend s.364 of the criminal code which provides for the punishment of 10 years jail term for a kidnapper.  The federal lawmakers have incessantly argued that stiffer punishments like  death sentence or life imprisonments for the crime of kidnapping will be the best alternative punishment. A bill was then proposed by the senate: captioned “Abduction, Wrongful Restraint and Confinement Bill 2021. The bill’s primary goal is to introduce stiffer punishment for kidnapping, wrongful restraint and wrongful confinement for ransom.

In summary, although the punishment for the offense of kidnapping is Nigeria as provided in s364 of the criminal code is 10 years jail term, some states of the federation have made a law which provides for stiffer punishment for kidnappers; Lagos for example provided for 25 years to life imprisonments for kidnappers and in some cases death penalty for the kidnapper(s) if the hostage died in the custody of the kidnapper.

The Evans,  the kidnapper’s case was a very notorious case and he and his cohorts finally met their Waterloo as they had been sent away for life.

WhatsApp Should Remove The 256-User Group Limit

By
Ndubuisi Ekekwe
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0

Dear META’s WhatsApp,

You need to remove the 256-limit in groups. We understand that your product is great and your positioning makes it very challenging for new entrants. Tekedia Institute spent money and created a really great product, Tekedia Hub. But the adoption by our members was poor.

So, in this edition of Tekedia Mini-MBA, we decided to revert to WhatsApp which worked very well in the past except the capacity issue. But just days into our program, we are forced to create multiple groups, creating communication confusion. 

(Telegram is hopeless here as the adoption remains low.)

If you want to monetize it to remove the limit, do so and companies will pay. The world needs an uncapped WhatsApp Group that can accommodate thousands because companies like Tekedia Institute need it to create virtual communities in programs.

You may need to reconsider this limiting 256 capacity.

Regards,

Ndubuisi

Tekedia Institute

Structuring Companies and Going Global, Out of Africa

By
Ndubuisi Ekekwe
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Join me tomorrow at Africa’s largest business school for entrepreneurial capitalism as we discuss “Structuring Companies and Going Global, Out of Africa”. At Tekedia Capital, this is what we do weekly as we prepare our portfolio companies to evolve out of Africa, and be positioned for global finance and opportunities. Zoom link in the Board school.tekedia.com.

Tekedia Mini-MBA >> a business school for innovators and makers.

Tekedia Institute offers Tekedia Mini-MBA, an innovation management 12-week program, optimized for business execution and growth, with digital operational overlay. It runs 100% online. The theme is Innovation, Growth & Digital Execution – Techniques for Building Category-King Companies. All contents are self-paced, recorded and archived which means participants do not have to be at any scheduled time to consume contents. Besides, programs are designed for ALL sectors, from fintech to construction, healthcare to manufacturing, agriculture to real estate, etc.

 

How Over-Reliance On A Social Media Platform Can Cause Start-Ups To Fail

By
Ojukwu Emmanuel
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0

We often hear this proverb, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” which implies that you shouldn’t concentrate all your prospects or resources on one thing or place, or you could lose everything. It is quite surprising that a lot of people still do not heed to this advice, as they often fall victim to certain consequences, merely by concentrating all their resources on a single thing. This article talks about the need for start-ups to desist from depending their business on social media platforms.

While going through my Twitter feeds, I stumbled upon a thread that spurred me to write extensively on this. According to a young man who composed the thread, he is a start-up founder who owned a media company. He talked about how his over-reliance on Facebook cost him his start-up business. In 2018, his female feel-good entertainment company was pushing at $75m+ a year in revenue, having 110 amazing creative employees and a fledgling OTT streaming channel. According to him, he built the business on the backs of Facebook, drinking from their firehose of eyeballs. The business growth became so outstanding and the traffic and video views skyrocketed beyond Buzzfeed, ABC, CNN, and Fox news.

His media company became masters at harnessing Facebook’s newsfeed with feel-good articles, videos, and stories. At their peak, they had 20MM social media followers, 40MM Comscore monthly uniques, 15MM live programming views per month, and 90M video views per month. Their live shows included 4+ hours a day of original unique programming. These remarkable achievements earned the start-up company the admiration of Facebook where they were constantly hosted at its headquarters with Facebook profiling little things about them at their conferences on how to build a media company.

With the uncertainty of life, the unusual happened. In his words, “In February 2018 the algorithm had a major shift. Now, we have been through tons of algorithm changes before, so this didn’t worry us at first, but something was different. Our high-level contacts at Facebook said Zuckerberg didn’t like the fluffy content we were producing and he wanted to be taken more seriously. He wanted the country to respect Facebook and get their actual news there ( previously it was family/friends update, feel-good viral content)”. 

This move by Facebook spelled doom for this start-up company as they watched helplessly as 90% of their organic traffic from Facebook dried up. Tragic! Totally displeased with the recent hiccup, the company reached out to Facebook and the feedback they got was that Facebook’s new focus wanted hard-hitting news and opinion pieces, meaning if they wanted more traffic, they would have to pay for it through sponsored ads. This is a start-up that was already spending close to $4m a month on Ads, so Facebook assumed they would spend more to achieve their desired results considering the algorithm change. The start-up began to accrue more losses than profit which eventually led to it folding up.

One costly mistake this start-up made which the owner disclosed was their failure to diversify on other alternative platforms big enough to balance out the insanely large amount of views they had on Facebook. They got so addicted to Facebook’s volume of traffic and had no other platform that could move the needle. This story above-mentioned should be a cautionary tale to every start-up to diversify their options. Knowing fully well that they are not the owners of various platforms they use, they should have it at the back of their minds that a simple algorithm can debilitate their years of hard work. It’s more like building on rented land because it can be taken at any time by the owners without minding whose ox is gored.

The ideal thing for start-ups to do is to scale one channel then diversify. This doesn’t mean that a start-up can not build on existing infrastructure, rather they should not give room for over-reliance and have a good exit/diversification strategy without dilly-dallying. This implies that they could create their websites to redirect traffic to their sites. We have often heard of cases where Facebook and Instagram accounts had to be either taken down or restricted forcing most start-ups to start afresh. The painful truth is that these platforms are actually in control of the audience and activities that go on there.

Unforeseen changes to API bans can ruin a start-up business overnight. Outside of just diversifying, companies need to develop their communities such as websites, discord, email list, etc. We can remember vividly when IG, Whatsapp, and Facebook experienced a total blackout for some hours which happened a year ago. That was indeed a wake-up call to all those solely relying on using these social media platforms to run their business, that by a push of a button, their business can be jeopardized. Start-ups need to know that when these platforms seem unfavorable, they should blame not the platform but themselves for failing to understand the risk involved.

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