Shortly after US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken held a press conference in which he smeared African Stream as a Kremlin influence op, Big Tech started cracking down on us. We were banned by (Google owned) YouTube, as well as by Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
We were also blacklisted by financial-services provider Stripe. And now Google has blocked us from more of its services, including Gmail and G Drive – further hampering our ability to work.
The US presents itself as a bastion of democracy. Integral to any healthy democracy is media freedom – allowing different viewpoints to be heard. But time and again, this basic ideal has been ridden roughshod over if it suits Washington. No evidence has been put forward to support the allegations made against us, yet we are being silenced on the biggest social-media platforms.
Why do Africans articulating their concerns pose such a threat to the Western establishment?
3 Comments
I think a BDS movement against these companies should be started across Africa. They are clearly not impartial and work for the interests of their government. I now hear Africans on YouTube saying they don’t want to get kicked off the platform so they’re self-censoring. This is a great opportunity to also educate ourselves on alternatives to these almost exclusively American platforms.
Rumble (which this site currently uses) and Odysee are both US. Telegram is Russian, WeChat/Weixin is Chinese. TikTok was created in China, but as you can see, they are bending over backwards to keep their US presence, so they’ve done everything from moving to US servers to banning the likes of Caitlin Johnstone and African Stream.
As long as it’s not affecting their interests, non-native foreign companies only value profit. So, in cases like these, they will comply with the wishes of US. Only solution is to have fully 100% African native platforms. A platform that excludes or is not dependent on non-African capital.