America puts more pressure on Uganda as Twitter bans over 400 user accounts linked to NRM

America puts more pressure on Uganda as Twitter bans over 400 user accounts linked to NRM as this raises a question, Is America putting more Pressure on Uganda?

On 2nd December 2021, the US microblogging company Twitter announced that it has shut down nearly 3,500 accounts worldwide over what the company termed “state-linked information operations”. or were posting pro-government propaganda in six countries, including Tanzania, Uganda, China, and Russia. 418 of the removed accounts were owned by the National Resistance Movement (NRM) party.

In Uganda, The American Tech Giant Twitter says they shutdown 418 handles or accounts engaged in coordinated inauthentic activity in support of Ugandan presidential incumbent Museveni and National Resistance Movement (NRM) party. Following the recent activity where Uganda blocked its citizens from accessing Facebook a Meta owned social network when over 20 ruling party– NRM-based Facebook Pages were switched off. The government reacted by banning the top social media giants that it claimed were spreading Propaganda against the government at it resulted Ugandans to start relying on VPN connections to bypass the blocked connection and access the platform. Depending on which Twitter profiles have been blocked, the government will most likely react in a similar manner.

However, Twitter said that “In most instances, accounts were suspended for various violations of our platform manipulation and spam policies,” and also announced that it will launch a Twitter Moderation Research Consortium early next year, bringing together “experts from across academia, civil society, NGOs and journalism” to study possible improvements.

Twitter said it would not seek to influence the consortium’s findings.