The phase two social media ban has begun in Uganda, shortly after switching off the Google PlayStore, Apple Store, and YouTube— Facebook has been blocked. As of today, the government through the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) has requested telecom companies to switch off all access to Facebook in Uganda.
This comes at a time when the country prepares to go into elections on the 14th of January and also when over 20 ruling party NRM-based Facebook Pages were switched off. This included the likes of Ashburg Kato, Full Figure, Bajjo, and many more.
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The circus all began when UCC wrote to Google requesting them to block certain opposition based YouTube channels that were reportedly a threat to national security. In the letter to Google, the govt claimed that these channels contain extremist or anarchic messages including messages likely to incite violence against sections of the public on account of their tribe and political opinions. Since the response from Google to UCC never yielded the response that the govt was expecting.
The NRM youthful blogger Asburg Kato accuses NUP based American Lawyer of writing to Facebook requesting them to remove their pages. On 10th January 2020, the giant social media company executed the request. The move for the govt to block Facebook has been partly been done due to this.
The OTT you are paying will not save you from accessing Facebook. As always, the ban seems to only affect users of the two biggest mobile networks (Airtel and MTN). The solution to this mess is the use of the same old VPN technology. It is likely that Facebook will be unblocked after the elections.
