SAN FRANCISCO, October 29, (THEWILL) – The Federal Government has revealed that it is set to sanitise the social media space in order to curtail the menace of fake news and hate speech.
This was disclosed on Tuesday by the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed at a press conference in Abuja saying the Federal Government will implement reforms in the broadcast industry and sanction any defaulting broadcast media.
The broadcast media reform, Mohammed added will extend to the social media space which he described as ‘totally out of control’.
“Since we launched our reform of the broadcast industry, many Nigerians have reached out to us, demanding that we also look into how to sanitise the Social Media space. I can assure you that we are also working on how to inject sanity into the Social Media space which, today, is totally out of control,” he said.
“No responsible government will sit by and allow fake news and hate speech to dominate its media space, because of the capacity of this menace to exploit our national fault lines to set us against each other and trigger a national conflagration.
“That is why we will continue to evolve ways to tackle fake news and hate speech until we banish both,” he said.
Mohammed disclosed that a committee has been set up to implement the recommendations approved by President Buhari on tackling hate speech and fake news.
He said hate speech and fake news are the ‘Siamese twins of evil’, and no responsible government will sit by and allow such to rule the airwaves.
