Meta Threatens To Cut Off Facebook In Nigeria -  

  People in Nigeria may lose access to Facebook and Instagram following an al allegation by the parent company Meta that it faced large fines and unrealistic regulatory demands from the Nigerian government. Last year, three Nigerian oversight agencies imposed fines on the US-based social media giants totaling more than $290 million for violating various laws and regulations.

   Meta was unsuccessful in a recent attempt to challenge the decisions in the Federal High Court Abuja. Meta was told it must provide an icon linking to educational videos about data privacy risk. This would be content created in collaboration with government approved educational institutions and nonprofit organizations. The Nigeria Nigeria Data Protection Commission insists the videos highlight dangers of manipulative and unfair data procession that could expose Nigerian users to health and financial risk.

   Benedicta, data management experts, joins me from the UK. Thank you so much for joining me at this point. Now being the most popular social media platform in Nigeria um used by tens of millions in the country, what effect do you think a restriction can have? All right, we can't hear you. Please unmute your microphone so we can hear you properly. All right.

   Can you speak up? Unmute your mic, please. Let's hear you. Can you hear me? Oh, good. We can now. So, go on. Okay. So, thank you so much for having me. um like you just said um tens of thousands of um Nigerians make use this platform. So I would say that the effect of this restriction ranges from economic impact to communication gap data and analytics disruptions as well as our social well-being.

   So I'm just going to walk my way all through. So in terms of economic impacts, I think nowadays we have a lot of persons be it small and medium scaled um businesses who make use of Facebook marketplace as a medium to sell their product as well as to advertise this product making product readily available to not only people in Nigeria but making this product available to the world in general.

   So with this effect it's going to reduce their tendencies to make um sales also in terms of um job opportunities. Right nowadays as Nigerians we have embraced the whole content creation as a job opportunity well as um social media strategists or analysts and brand managers. So with restricting our access to this platform is there's going to be a decline in job opportunities and this is going to tell on the economy as well.

   Also in terms of communication I think presently we have seen cases whereby something is happening in a particular area and then someone notifies the general public through Facebook. So when we restrict this um access then there's a gap in communication our social well-being as well. Nowadays most times after a long day at work you would just want to get home log on to Facebook and see what's happening just to leave a little and just to enjoy yourself.

   So if we are being restricted from this assets it's not only going to affect the economy but it's also going to affect our social well-being. Well, while this all you have said is quite important, this also borders on data privacy. How important is um how important is it for us to ensure that our data is protected and what are the pros and cons? Okay, so data privacy is very important.

   I mean for persons who do not know data privacy is how the personal information is being collected, used and stored. So I think I'm going to be addressing this based off of the user perspective and the business as well. So in terms of pros for the um user I would say it helps the user to like build more trust in the brand thereby making them give more authentic information.

  Just imagine yourself as a user you know that your information is being protected rightly then you would want to give right information. Also it helps them to uphold the human right because um data privacy which is similar to freedom of information which is um a human right enables one to know the reason why um their information is used right. Also it helps in terms of pros.

  It helps um for identity theft right it helps to prevent identity theft which is very paramount in some parts of the world today. So in terms of businesses, it prevents businesses from getting um lawsuits or um oriented fines which will now um so when these businesses get this lawsuit is putting a dent on their whole um brand and thereby reducing the faith one has in um that business.

 Also in terms of innovation, I mean the world is gradually moving and embracing artificial intelligence as well machine learning and all these tools make use of well vast data sets. So by the time this data privacy is rigid and is stiff then um this innovation being slowed down. Benedict for data management experts.