Why are you on Social Media? While you are still thinking of the real reason why you are on all Silicon Valley apps, here is the advice from Blogger Cyprian Nyakundi’s 8 years experience on Social Media.
Cyprian Nyakundi is fronting for many Independent African Platforms to topple the masters of the Universe controlling People and their thoughts from Silicone Valley.
The Blogger, who soon will be the President of African Independent Platforms had these Insights on the whole struggle to Social Media Independence In Africa.
Many governments have been gagging independent news bloggers, vloggers, sites etc and have been promoting and sponsoring articles that praise them raping Social Media Independence in Africa.
By Cyprian Nyakundi
I have been on social media for 8 years and based on what I have gone through, I have some advice.
Number 1- Don’t depend on social media 100% for your revenue, these companies keep tweaking their algorithms and people can conspire against you and get you kicked out. How will you survive?
At least try to invest what you make online in an offline venture, It helps when the market is not rewarding. Your content is your asset.
When social media big tech companies suspend you, all your content goes, everything you have ever worked for goes down the drain! So what?
At least have your own independent platform where you first upload your content then social media is the second option. If you can, let people watch stuff from your independent platform. You can share a short version and direct people to the full version on your platform!
As independent creators, you can come together and launch an independent platform where you can ask users to subscribe hence reduce the risk of becoming a begar if Youtube censors, tweaks their algorithm etc!
Youtube and Adsense revenue is very poor, especially in Africa ( Kenya to be specific). Why would corporates dish out money to Google to pay you a fraction after struggling and getting a lot of traffic? Direct ads is the only way!
In 2018 I lost my FB page with more than 400K likes, Twitter with more than 1M followers, YouTube with 34K subscribers, Vimeo with 17K subscribers and several attacks on my blog. You grow an audience and one day someone wakes up and with a snap of the finger, de-platforms you!
As the most de-platformed Blogger, I think there is nothing I have not gone through. As of May 2020, I have 27 cases in court against my blogging activities. Some cases have been in court since 2014…Because the aim is to gag!
Actually, no one should cheer censorship because it usually catches up with anyone. Personally, there are people I totally dislike but will never wish censorship on them!
What if I was some small blogger who totally depended on social media for revenue and everything? I would have become a total beggar! But I was big on all platforms…
But I came to realize the cartel that was against me was very big, an NGO was funding the campaign to de-platform me. Whatsapp Groups were set up and the role was to report Nyakundi!!! Everyday
These guys never gave up when they realized I was still there, active on my blog because many people could read me. They engaged in strategy no Two. Report my domain name to FB and Twitter, claiming it was “Unsafe”. In a few days, nobody could share my blog links on social media
I wrote to Twitter and FB, and complained about the censorship, FB unlocked my domain, Twitter also unlocked after a few days, without fucking explanations!!!!
By the way, After my FB page was suspended, I opened a new one, and started a group now with more than 30K members, then boom, FACT CHECKERS! On my page and group, I challenged the fact-checkers, but they never respond it is final! My page reach was cut down by 60%.
To big tech, you only become human when they want to sell your personal information. Cambridge Analytica sold Kenyans data but no one ever questioned. Only Americans made noise and they were fined. As Africans, we have to use their laws!
So big is the big tech industry that even if you have a genuine complaint or censorship and being targeted, humans never respond to you. You get their auto-generated responses because there are billions of users and you are just a statistic assigned to machine learning algorithms
There is nothing like remaining on Twitter or Facebook and “fighting”. Big tech has billions of users, and they see us like a statistic, not persons. I need a platform where I will be viewed as a human being.
