Facebook Shuts Down Uganda Govt Officials' Accounts For Manipulation

Facebook has reportedly shut down the accounts of Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni’s officials for manipulation ahead of the country’s presidential elections this week, Aljazeera reports.

IA statement released by Facebook today, (Monday) the social media company said:

Given the impending election in Uganda, we moved quickly to investigate and take down this network. They used fake and duplicate accounts to manage pages, comment on other people’s content, impersonate users, re-share posts in groups to make them appear more popular than they were.

Museveni’s senior press secretary Don Wanyama whose Facebook and Instagram accounts were deleted by Facebook blasted Facebook using Twitter and said:

Shame on the foreign forces that think they can aid and plant a puppet leadership on Uganda by disabling online accounts of [ruling party] NRM supporters. You won’t take away President Kaguta Museveni.

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Minister of Gender, Labour and Social Development Frank Tumwebaze ordered Facebook to unblock them immediately:

Plz @ITU @ITUSecGen one of the threats we must speak against in our digital ecosystem is this abuse of communication platforms by tech giants. Connectivity shdn’t be a right to enjoy at the mercy of Tech giants.@Facebook shd unblock selectively targeted #Ugandan accounts ASAP!

Various accounts belonging to Museveni’s lieutenants have been blocked but Museveni’s account is still active. This comes after Bobi Wine the country’s firebrand politician has staged a very brave and tough fight in trying to unseat Museveni one more time on Thursday’s general election,

Last week Facebook blocked Donald Trump’s accounts and Twitter permanently suspended him. Meanwhile, Bobi wine has asked the ICC to investigate Museveni’s human rights abuses.

More: Aljazeera