Google Bans African Stream

Gmail has become the latest instrument of tech giant Google to censor African Stream. On 1 October, the multinational US corporation locked us out of its Workspace application, causing us to lose access to two years of email messages and files stored in the giant’s cloud-based storage facilities.

Like other technology and social media platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and Threads, all of which have given us the boot in the last two weeks, Google did not provide any credible reason for banning us other than saying we ‘violated Google Workspace policy,’ which includes ‘sending spam or using the account for any kind of fraud.’

We have never at any point engaged in the activities mentioned above. Of course, we did not expect a reasonable explanation because there is simply none; we can only conclude they took us down based on US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s unsubstantiated allegation on 13 September that we are ‘Kremlin propagandists.’ Is this the rules-based order the US and other Western states passionately discuss? How can Big Tech bow down after one speech by a US official? How is that democratic?