Buhari drags Nigeria into tiny club of Twitter blockers

...CONTINUE READING>>>

Twitter suspended in Nigeria

Only very few countries have blocked the micro-blogging platform Twitter since it was born 21 March 2006 in San Francisco, United States.

The blocking countries are united in that they are autocracies and did so because they could not monitor what their people would say.

Some countries had imposed restricted access during elections, when the ruling parties planned to steal the elections.

But very few countries have imposed a ban or indefinite suspension as announced by Buhari government today.

As of 2021, the blockers are China, Iran, North Korea, and Turkmenistan.

Nigeria on Friday joined the tiny club.

Here are four countries that have blocked access to Twitter;

China

Twitter is officially blocked in China; however, many Chinese people circumvent the block to use it even major Chinese companies and national media, such as Huawei and CCTV, use Twitter through a government approved VPN.

China also has it own WeChat, a version of Twitter, that it is able to monitor and censor.

Iran

The government banned Twitter since 2009 during the Iranian presidential election.

In September 2013, a glitch gave the people access. But it, along with Facebook was blocked again.

North Korea

In April 2016, North Korea started to block Twitter “in a move underscoring its concern with the spread of online information.”

Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan, once ruled by a President for life, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, who died in 2006, has a record of poor human rights, poor treatment of minorities.

It does not also allow press freedoms, and religious freedoms.

As of 2018, foreign news and opposition websites are blocked in Turkmenistan, and international social networks such as Twitter are “often inaccessible”.