The Abuja Division of the Federal High Court has granted the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON) leave to serve a writ of summons on Meta, the owner of Facebook.
The court gave the nod pursuant to an application by ARCON in a pending N30 billion suit against the social media giant for violation of the extant advertising laws of Nigeria.
The writ is to be served at the Meta corporate headquarters of Meta, which also owns Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp social media platforms.
While Meta is the first defendant in the suit, AT3 Resources Limited is the second defendant.
ARCON is seeking a declaration that publishing various advertisements and marketing communications materials targeted at Nigeria through Meta’s platforms without prior vetting and approval by its advertising standards panel is illegal.
The regulatory body also claimed that the act disregarded Nigerian culture, constitutional tenets, moral values and religious sensitivity of citizens.
ARCON is, therefore, seeking an order of perpetual injunction restraining the defendants, their privies, agents, servants and associates from publishing any advertising or marketing communications materials without recourse to ARCON in line with the country’s advertising law.
It is also seeking N30 billion in fines and sanctions for the continued violations and infractions of the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria Act No. 23 of 2022.
A Nigerian lady has shared a message she received from a suspected imposter.
In the message sent to the Twitter user @benxta, the imposter told her that he created an account on Facebook with her name and needs more photos from her.
The Federal Government on Tuesday asked the social media giant, Facebook, to stop the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) from using its platform to incite violence in the country.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, made the call at a meeting with a team from Facebook in Abuja.
He said several people had been killed in the South-East because of the group’s activities, adding that Facebook has no reason whatsoever for allowing the use of its platform to the organisation whose goal was to destabilise the country.
The latest warning came about one year after the federal government suspended another social media platform, Twitter, for allegedly promoting hate speech and other activities undermining the country’s existence.
Mohammed said: “I have called this meeting to enable us to discuss the increasing use of Facebook by separatists and anarchists, especially those of them based outside the country, to instigate violence and ethnic hatred in Nigeria.
For whatever reason, they seem to have now chosen Facebook as their platform of choice. And their tools include disinformation, incendiary statements and hate speech.
They use Facebook broadcasts to reach their followers, who are in thousands. They tag those opposed to their violent ways as ‘saboteurs’ who must be attacked, maimed and killed. They use both English and their local language as it suits them.
“Our social media people have been monitoring these separatists, anarchists and purveyors of hate, and have been reporting their atrocious actions to Facebook, but all they get are default responses that their complaints have been received and are being looked into.
“Most often than not, nothing is done about such complaints. The truth is that whatever Facebook is doing to check these people is mere tokenism and is totally ineffective.”
Former Jenifa’s Dairy actress, Juliana Oloyede has revealed on her social media handle that popular pastor, Timilehin Adigun was impersonating her on Facebook.
According to the Nollywood actress, her former foster father, Pastor Timilehin, is refusing to release her social media account passwords to her.
The actress said the pastor has access to her Facebook account which is linked to her Instagram account and he has been impersonating her on Facebook and posting as her.
She said she has been trying to get her passwords back from him, all to no avail.
She added that she then went to his church and requested to see him but their conversation was far from civil and Pastor Timilehin Adigun called security to throw her and her sisters out of the church.
She wrote in the caption of the video:
“I know some people are going to call me and say all sorts but I AM TIRED!!!
To some people, this might be a wrong move, and some might prefer I stay quiet but I am honestly TIRED!!!!
And I am not going to shut up.”
She went on to state that she has no idea what the pastor wants from her.
Oloyede continued;
“I DON’T KNOW WHAT Timilehin Adigun wants from me, I really don’t know. There is so much I want to say but I don’t even have the words to express it.
I also know that people are going to have different opinions about it.
Right now, I don’t want anybody calling me or texting me to tell me how to go about my life, what to say or what not to say, what to do or what not to do.
Nobody should tell me what the spirit is saying to them or tell me to think about the church and the body of Christ.
I don’t want to hear any of it.
I don’t understand why I am having to pay or stress to get my stuff from a guy who is sitting in his mother’s school doing nothing.
I just want my passwords for goodness sake and I want Timilehin Adigun to leave me alone!”
The Taliban has slammed what it terms the hypocrisy of branding the U.S. and Facebook as proponents of censorship of free speech after a question about the regime’s stance on freedom of expression.
This was in reaction to a question that was dismissed by the Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, on Tuesday.
“This question should be asked to those people who are claiming to be promoters of freedom of speech, who do not allow publication of all information,” Mujahid responded to a question about freedom of speech in the new government.
“I can ask the Facebook company. This question should be asked to them.”
Notably, the Taliban mentioned Facebook on censoring of free speech and not Twitter, which has permitted Taliban leaders to remain on the platform.
Facebook, however, issued a statement to the BBC that Taliban accounts will continue to be banned.
“The Taliban is sanctioned as a terrorist organization under U.S. law and we have banned them from our services under our Dangerous Organization policies,” a Facebook spokesman told the BBC on Monday night.
“This means we remove accounts maintained by or on behalf of the Taliban and prohibit praise, support, and representation of them.”
We also have a dedicated team of Afghanistan experts, who are native Dari and Pashto speakers and have knowledge of local context, helping to identify and alert us to emerging issues on the platform.”
A Nigerian man, Kayode Adegbite has taken to microblogging platform, Twitter to announce his academic and career wins.
Kayode revealed that he bagged a Master’s degree in Information Technology with distinction and has landed a top job at Facebook.
According to the young man he will be joining the Facebook team as a T-Program manager two weeks from May 7, 2021.
In his Twitter post, he celebrated his growth from being at Yaba to moving to Silicon Valley in California to join one of the biggest tech firms in the world.
The Master’s degree holder shared a photo of himself in the graduation and screenshot of the job offer from Facebook.
I’m happy to share these two announcements: – I finished my MSc degree with an outstanding result. – I will be joining @Facebook as a T-Program Manager in two weeks.
Yaba to Silicon-Valley Rocket. God did it,” he tweeted.
Valentine’s day is a day being celebrated for love. The Valentine frenzy is widely noticed among the single youths nationwide.
A Nigerian lady identified as Sandra who is based in Lagos State travelled all the way from Lagos to Abuja in search of love but she got stranded as the young man she was going to visit switched off his phone.
According to the story the young damsel met the guy on Valentine’s day in Facebook. They chatted and they scheduled to meet each other in Abuja where the guy lives. The man promised to cater for the transportation fare of the girl from Lagos State to Abuja. The guy name is D-Boy.
D-Boy phone was off and the girl became stranded as there is no way he could be reached. The girl continually dialled his phone number all to no avail. The people in Kubwa area of Abuja where the girl got stranded have contributed to assist her to travel back to Lagos.
Many people blasted and blame the girl for coming all the way from Lagos State to Abuja to meet someone she has never met in real life. She took a big risk in the name of love. They advised her not to take such risk again. It is equally applicable to other ladies who are prone to such love deception. Many people have gone through such means.
Notwithstanding some people have gotten married by taking such risk and it worked for them.
Sometimes, there are some certain things that you will see happening in our every day and sometimes, you’ll be left dumbfounded as you may not know what to say.
Following another issue of some Nigerian men training up their future ‘bride-to-be’ in schools, a Nigerian lady has taken the popular social media platform Facebook to voice out her mind about an alleged Obinna, a man whom according to her trained her in school during her time as a student.
According to Mmachi Chi she stated that Obinna was nothing but her ex, stating that she has already ended everything with him, only for him to resurface again after hearing the news of her upcoming wedding and to gun her down (in a layman’s words, to kill her).
The two and a half week-long #EndSARS protests in Nigeria against police brutality has garnered attention and raised awareness far beyond the country’s borders thanks to a savvy well-planned out campaign, boosted by Nigerian and global celebrities. But none of this would have been possible without the sheer reach and immediacy of major social media platforms.
The peaceful protest started online using the #EndSars hashtag before spreading quickly to thousands of people joining protests on the streets of Nigeria’s big cities and then London, Toronto, Houston, and elsewhere, again thanks to social media.
But all social media is not created equal.
The campaign to shut down controversial and brutal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) thrived on Twitter in particular and a series of significant EndSARS hashtags trended globally and had millions of retweets. Even Twitter’s enigmatic founder Jack Dorsey joined young Nigerians in encouraging the global Twitter community to donate to the protest organizers using bitcoin.
Twitter gave the EndSARS hashtag an official emoji and verified the Twitter accounts of several users at the forefront of the protest. This act of support contributed to the credibility of the protest and boosted the protest both online and offline.
But even as the hashtag picked up steam and shared by the likes of Kanye West and Rihanna, over on Facebook and Instagram some of the posts with the #EndSARS hashtag was being incorrectly labeled as “fake news.”
To make things worse, these “fake news” labels by Facebook and Instagram inadvertently helped to promote a self-serving anti-fake news campaign by the Nigerian Army, which has come under intense scrutiny after men in military uniforms opened fire on unarmed peaceful protestors at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos on Tuesday. The Nigerian Army has claimed its soldiers were not involved in what some have labeled a “massacre” despite plenty of video evidence. Many Nigerians now perceive its moves as government propaganda to discredit the #EndSARS protest.
The Nigerian Army had during the EndSARS protest launched “Operation Crocodile Smile” which it claimed is cyber warfare that includes identifying and countering fake news against the Nigerian government. When the Army was accused of shooting at protesters at the Lekki toll gate in Lagos three days ago, they labeled social media and news media reports of these claims as fake news. This is despite circulations of pictures, videos, and eyewitness reports backing claims of soldiers shooting at the protesters.
“It seems clear the social media platform’s algorithms are completely falling to differentiate between genuine posts and fake news, causing harm to users and serving as evidence that those algorithms simply are not up to the job of fact-checking when large scale breaking news event occurs,” explained Ray Walsh, a digital privacy analyst at ProPrivacy based in the UK.
To be clear, there have been dozens of supposedly pro-EndSARS posts and photos shared on the most popular social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp (also owned by Facebook) which have been flagged as false or as misleading by the protest organizers themselves in a bid to avoid the movement’s credibility being tarnished. The open nature of social media means it is difficult to control or manage the sources of information whether it is legitimate or otherwise.
“Instagram and Facebook must make every effort to ensure that genuine posts containing important information about the government’s actions are not being unfairly flagged as fake news,” says Walsh.
Though Instagram’s public relations team has since released a statement of apology on Twitter admitting it incorrectly flag content supporting #EndSARS and marking them as false. It says the issue has now been resolved, but supporters of the protest have slammed Facebook for actively helping the Nigerian government refute allegations about the shooting.
It’s just the latest example of the challenge social media’s executives face in how to make decisions when it comes to preventing the spread of misleading information. Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg, in particular, is under scrutiny and pressure in the run-up to the US elections on Nov. 3. Twitter has run into major controversy in the US by attempting to block users sharing a news story which it claimed was misleading and it has taken to labeling tweets with fact-check tags.
In Nigeria, Dorsey has even been accusing of inciting violence by actively supporting the funding of the mostly peaceful #EndSARS protests. Adamu Garba, a former presidential candidate tweeted that he has charged Dorsey to a Nigerian court and he is demanding a compensation of $1 billion to be paid to the Nigerian government for the loss of lives, properties & convenience during the EndSARS protest. Garba, a controversial Twitter user is also demanding that a court order is given to stop Twitter from operating in Nigeria.
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