If the State wants to control social media, here is advice

Popular social-media toys – Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Yelp, Skype, YouTube and Quora have opened the lines of communication between millions of people. PHOTO | FILE | AFP

What you need to know:

  • A law prohibiting Kenyans from using fake names on social media accounts is likely to come to Parliament by end of June, reports say.
  • People don’t follow ghosts into a dark forest, but will a brave man or woman.
  • From a narrow power view, you are best served if they get a lot of mind-numbing useless stuff.
  • The other thing about people who post on social media anonymously is that they cannot cash in.

A law prohibiting Kenyans from using fake names on social media accounts is likely to come to Parliament by end of June, reports say.

On the face of it, the law is trying to do something that several people sympathise with: The problem, even a danger, on social media posed by people hiding behind anonymity to say the most divisive, hurtful, and defamatory things.

There are freedom of expression advocates, who see this as an attempt to control free speech and to muzzle critical commentary about those in power.

But, perhaps, for practical purposes, the question should be if forcing people to post things on social media in their real names would make the space more responsible.

Or if it is a politically good thing.

If we look at Kenyan social media, the most influential people on both Twitter, Facebook, and bloggers don’t write anonymously.

CONTROVERSIAL HANDLES

The most followed, even controversial handles on Twitter aren’t the anonymous ones either.

The anonymous pages say the most abusive and annoying things, yes, but there is actually no evidence that they have agenda-shaping power.

What they do is scandalise, hurt the feelings of those they attack, and destroy the egos of the powerful.

They don’t shift the power equation, or shape the social or political narrative of the day.

Banning them might protect a few people’s fragile egos, but it won’t improve public discourse.

FEARED MOST

From Uganda recently we learnt that the people to be feared most are the ones who take to social media in their own names.

Going by the worldwide coverage of her most recent exploits, probably everyone in the world who takes an interest in news now knows Ms Stella Nyanzi, the outspoken Makerere University academic, gay rights activist, and feminist extraordinaire.

To most people outside Uganda, she is the woman she was thrown in jail for calling President Yoweri Museveni “a pair of buttocks” on Facebook, and calling out his wife Janet, who also happens to be Education minister, for backing out of a government promise to provide sanitary towels to school girls.

ADMINISTRATIVE DISPUTE

Nyanzi is articulate and fearless. Once she stripped naked in protest when she was locked out of her office in an administrative dispute. A few minutes later she got her keys back.

There is no word that is too taboo for her use when battling her adversaries, as the Ugandan First Lady found out.

There are many Facebook pages and Twitter handles whose owners remain unknown that have been hammering President Museveni hard in recent years.

But Nyanzi has dethroned all of them in following and influence.

Primarily it is because she doesn’t hide behind a pseudonym.

Therefore, it might sound counter-intuitive, but if you don’t want your citizens to have a lot of impact on social media, encourage them to post anonymously.

FAKE PAGE

A “fake” page is easy to dismiss as the work of cranks or cowards. And serious people might delight in them, but will never take them seriously.

People don’t follow ghosts into a dark forest, but will a brave man or woman.

Many people, when they are posting on social media as themselves, think a little harder about what they are going to say, and crosscheck the facts and data.

They, therefore, often say very informative and game changing things.

If you are a government, you really don’t want people getting very smart by learning significant things from social media.

NARROW POWER VIEW

From a narrow power view, you are best served if they get a lot of mind-numbing useless stuff.

You don’t want all those tweets out there telling people the percentage by which unga and tomato prices have risen since Jubilee came to power.

The other thing about people who post on social media anonymously is that they cannot cash in.

GARNER SOME TRAFFIC

You can’t put your picture so the boys or girls can have a crash on you when you say something funny; you can’t link your website so you can garner some traffic; and even if you get a million followers on Facebook you can’t sell advertising and make the big money that some individuals with those numbers do.

But, if you do the thing in your name, you can become a model activist like Nyanzi, or a digital martyr like Cyprian Nyakundi.

A smart government that really wants to control social media should not clean it up.

Its interests are best served by muddying it even more.

The author is publisher of Africa data visualiser Africapedia.com and explainer site Roguechiefs.com.