ABUJA: Nigeria asked Google to block the use of YouTube channels and livestreams by banned groups and terrorist organizations in the country, Information Minister Lai Mohammed said on Thursday.
Nigeria has been exploring ways to regulate social media usage in the country, Africa’s most populous. The country is home to millions of Internet users and platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Tiktok are popular. YouTube “channels and emails containing names of banned groups and their affiliates should not be allowed on Google platforms,” Mohammed said he told Google executives in Abuja, the country’s capital.
Charles Murito, Google’s sub-Saharan African director for government affairs and public policy, in a statement said the company already has measures to address the Nigerian government’s concerns.
Those measures include a system for trained users to flag troublesome content, he added. “We share the same goals and objectives,” Murito said. “We do not want our platform to be used for ill purposes.”
The minister said the government was particularly concerned with online activities by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). The government has labeled IPOB, a group campaigning for the secession of a southeastern region of Nigeria, a “terrorist organization.”
The YouTube concerns are part of an effort by the government, the minister said, to protect Nigerian Internet users from harmful effects of social media, especially ahead of a presidential election next year.
Nigeria suspended Twitter in June 2021 and blocked access to users after the social media giant removed a post from President Muhammadu Buhari threatening to punish regional secessionists.
The government lifted the Twitter ban six months later.
Nigeria asks Google to block banned groups from YouTube
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Nigeria asks Google to block banned groups from YouTube
- Google said it already has measures to address the Nigerian government’s concerns including a system for trained users to flag troublesome content
EU warns Meta it must open up WhatsApp to rival AI chatbots
- The EU executive on Monday told Meta to give rival chatbots access to WhatsApp after an antitrust probe found the US giant to be in breach of the bloc’s competition rules
BRUSSELS: The EU executive on Monday told Meta to give rival chatbots access to WhatsApp after an antitrust probe found the US giant to be in breach of the bloc’s competition rules.
The European Commission said a change in Meta’s terms had “effectively” barred third-party artificial intelligence assistants from connecting to customers via the messaging platform since January.
Competition chief Teresa Ribera said the EU was “considering quickly imposing interim measures on Meta, to preserve access for competitors to WhatsApp while the investigation is ongoing, and avoid Meta’s new policy irreparably harming competition in Europe.”
The EU executive, which is in charge of competition policy, sent Meta a warning known as a “statement of objections,” a formal step in antitrust probes.
Meta now has a chance to reply and defend itself. Monday’s step does not prejudge the outcome of the probe, the commission said.
The tech giant rejected the commission’s preliminary findings.
“The facts are that there is no reason for the EU to intervene,” a Meta spokesperson said.
“There are many AI options and people can use them from app stores, operating systems, devices, websites, and industry partnerships. The commission’s logic incorrectly assumes the WhatsApp Business API is a key distribution channel for these chatbots,” the spokesperson said.
Opened in December, the EU probe marks the latest attempt by the 27-nation bloc to rein in Big Tech, many of whom are based in the United States, in the face of strong pushback by the government of US President Donald Trump.
- Meta in the firing line -
The investigation covers the European Economic Area (EEA), made up of the bloc’s 27 states, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway — with the exception of Italy, which opened a separate investigation into Meta in July.
The commission said that Meta is “likely to be dominant” in the EEA for consumer messaging apps, notably through WhatsApp, and accused Meta of “abusing this dominant position by refusing access” to competitors.
“We cannot allow dominant tech companies to illegally leverage their dominance to give themselves an unfair advantage,” Ribera said in a statement.
There is no legal deadline for concluding an antitrust probe.
Meta is already under investigation under different laws in the European Union.
EU regulators are also investigating its platforms Facebook and Instagram over fears they are not doing enough to tackle the risk of social media addiction for children.
The company also appealed a 200-million-euro fine imposed last year by the commission under the online competition law, the Digital Markets Act.
That case focused on its policy asking users to choose between an ad-free subscription and a free, ad-supported service, and Brussels and Meta remain in discussions over finding an alternative that would address the EU’s concerns.
