Nigeria requested Google to dam using YouTube channels and livestreams by banned teams and terrorist organisations within the nation, Information Minister Lai Mohammed mentioned on Thursday.

Nigeria has been exploring methods to control social media utilization within the nation, Africa’s most populous. The nation is house to tens of millions of Internet customers and platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Tiktok are common.

YouTube “channels and emails containing names of banned groups and their affiliates should not be allowed on Google platforms,” Mohammed mentioned he informed Google executives in Abuja, the nation’s capital.

Charles Murito, Google’s sub-Saharan African director for presidency affairs and public coverage, in a press release mentioned the corporate already has measures to deal with the Nigerian authorities’s considerations.

Those measures embody a system for educated customers to flag troublesome content material, he added. “We share the same goals and objectives,” Murito mentioned. “We do not want our platform to be used for ill purposes.”

The minister mentioned the federal government was significantly involved with on-line actions by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). The authorities has labeled IPOB, a gaggle campaigning for the secession of a southeastern area of Nigeria, a “terrorist organization.”

The YouTube considerations are a part of an effort by the federal government, the minister mentioned, to guard Nigerian web customers from dangerous results of social media, particularly forward of a presidential election subsequent yr.

Nigeria suspended Twitter in June 2021 and blocked entry to customers after the social media large eliminated a put up from President Muhammadu Buhari threatening to punish regional secessionists.

The authorities lifted the Twitter ban six months later.

© Thomson Reuters 2022