Caption: Twitter executives were in Kenya on the same Day Blogger Nyakundi was suspended. They discussed the suspension of Twitter account @C_NyakundiH Privately.
Ramone Martin, East Africa’s Twitter Executive and Adrian Ciesielski, Africa’s Twitter Sales Manager happened to be in the country where they had attended several functions including Safaricom’s Blaze event in Mombasa and also visited Standard Media group under the invitation of Carole Kimutai, a former Tuko Staffer. Tuko is the Gossip Blog that had filed a fake DMCA claim against the @C_NyakundiH Twitter account and this is what Twitter used as a basis to suspend the Twitter account under the guise of many “many complaints”.
The blaze event was organized by Scangroup, the digital agency whose staffers have been lobbying for the suspension of @C_NyakundiH Twitter Account.
Journalists we have spoken to have confirmed to us that the Twitter executives discussed the @C_NyakundiH suspension privately in an event attended by journalists and local Kenyan agency individuals.
According to the masters of the universe executives, they were receiving an average of five complaints per day confirming that the account was a victim of targetted malicious reporting. Though they refused to state who was sending those complaints because Nyakundi has never received any communication from Twitter pertaining any tweet.
The event was organized by Carole Kimutai, a former Tuko staffer. Only journalists and agency fellas were invited as Bloggers were ignored. Kenyan media has been running a campaign against Bloggers because they view them as competition. Media has seen dwindling revenues as citizen journalism eats into their advertising revenue.
Caption: Tweet from a Nation Journalist who attended a talk where the Twitter executives privately discussed the suspension of Cyprian Nyakundi From Twitter
We have also learnt that Twitter is setting up the East and Central Africa office in Westlands as they aim to make more revenue through their advertising packages.
Twitter is targetting private companies like Safaricom and that may be the reason why the Twitter executives attended the Safaricom Blaze event in a pay to play scenario. Safaricom spends quite a sum with Twitter ads and many Kenyans have been observing that anything negative about Safaricom is always censored.
Their office will also target government agencies. This a worrying trend because government agencies may start demanding censorship of critics in order to give them business.
