{UAH} UAH CLOSURE: 30 SECONDS OF THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM!

1. QUESTION: Why are some people determined to get UAH face book group closed indefinitely?
Ans:Weaken internet activism among Ugandans

2. MOTIVATION:

1- most of the group's views are anti-Museveni ;
2- The group has a membership of over 70,000 people. So,some other group/ page owner is jealous;
3- Money-Someone is being paid to keep reporting the group to face book

4. Is face book aware of people's ill motives? Most probably not.

The Ugandans At Heart Community (UAH) group was closed on 2nd Dec 2014. Facebook reopened it after a meeting with some of our members before Christmas. Then, it closed it again on 6th January 2015. When it was reopened, we decided to start moderating all posts to the group such that we aren't closed again for any reason, but they still did it. It made the group less active but it was done for the sake of making sure no facebook rules are broken. The reference to "Ugandan" in the description of the group signals a keen interest in getting membership that is in love with Uganda as a country. We want our members to feel pride in their heritage. Political Facebook groups provide users with the space for expressive political performance that helps users present political identity to others.

My understanding is that Face book automatically closes a group or a page after getting lots of complaints. They never review the complaints to see if there are genuine or not but just automatically close the group. With over one billion worldwide subscribers, Facebook don't have time to review individual cases, and obviously some people are taking advantage of this loophole. My suspicion is that some people have got their tails up as far as UAH is concerned and want to see it closed. In repressive regimes like the Museveni government, Facebook use by dissidents causes dilemma actions for repressive regimes. After what happened in Tunisia and Egypt, such regimes have devised means of making sure that such situations never reach their shores. The Iranian Green Revolution, the Arab Spring revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia and the worldwide Occupy movements in 2012 all used social media to some degree in their movement building efforts. In Tunisia, Facebook helped spread the story of Mohamed Bouazizi, a fruit vendor who set himself on fire himself after being harassed by police.

If let's say, UAH is closed forever, are the NRMs forgetting that some people may retaliate and get anything NRM closed on face book starting with individual accounts of people that support the regime. Some people may see this as a chance to start cyber warfare if this is how much civilisation has degenerated in our country.

Internet activism is basically divided into:Awareness/advocacy, organization/mobilization, and action/reaction. UAH is mainly an advocacy forum since few members have taken action out of what is being advocated for. The main UAH-Google has done a lot of Lobbying in some areas via the Internet, thanks to its mass e-mail base and its ability to broadcast a message widely without any cost. Facebook groups grew exponentially in the late 2000s. While much analysis is done on UAH-Google group, less is done on face book groups and pages as users there prefer mainly chit chat or one liners about issues. As a result, many facebook groups don't have a discernable instrumental purpose. But we make an effort to share analysis from Google to Facebook to benefit especially the young stars there. We also added some government officials in both groups to at least communicate specific policy decisions to people but unfortunately, few of them do. As a performance, UAH has done well to influence policy positions in the Museveni government ever since it was created in 2007.

Facebook differs from other online forums in that it is predicated on the user revealing themselves to a network of others. People again take advantage of this loophole by opening up accounts in pseudo names. It's difficult for facebook to verify this, and I would think it wouldn't be necessary, but it would help if the person reporting the group has got a genuine account. In the case of UAH, I'm sure that the people that keep reporting the group are the same. And It would help if facebook reveals them to us such that we remove them from the group and save them of their bad experience on UAH other than unfairly closing the whole group. Overall, we pray that facebook addresses the loopholes in their automatic system such that UAH is not closed again(i.e. if its opened again), due to some bastard who wants to feel like he owns everybody's opinions on the internet!--

Abbey Kibirige  Semuwemba

UAH founder

Stalk my blog at: http://semuwemba.com/

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