Facebook has been accused of failing to invest sufficiently to combat misinformation as it pursues rapid growth in Africa, where the Covid pandemic has highlighted the outsize role played by social media in online discourse.
Traditional media and governments have an increasingly limited ability to control information flows on the continent, as social media platforms including Facebook seek to expand rapidly, though largely without fanfare.
“Facebook are losing users left, right and centre in the global north, so where are the new users coming from? The global south,” said Anri van der Spuy, a senior researcher at Research ICT Africa, a thinktank.
Sub-Saharan Africa has a population of 1.1 billion and, at an average of about 30%, internet use is three times higher than a decade ago.
Toussaint Nothias, research director at the Digital Civil Society Lab of Stanford University, who has worked extensively on Facebook, said it was “generally accepted” that Facebook had launched an “aggressive expansion” in the global south to win new users following a decline in the developed world.
“Africa has a young growing population and so offers opportunities for Facebook to become an entry to the internet, via Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram or whatever. That can be monetised down the line,” he said.
Many – but not all – academic studies have linked Covid vaccine hesitancy with misinformation circulating on social media in Africa, as elsewhere.
In some parts of the continent, such as South...
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