Venezuela's Minister for Communication and Information Freddy Ñáñez. Photo: Fuser News/file photo.
Caracas (OrinocoTribune.com)—The Venezuelan government has taken measures to protect its population from disinformation and destabilization attempts carried out through social media, particularly through the social media platform X, owned by Elon Musk. On August 9, Venezuela suspended the X platform for 10 days in the wake of fake news being shared by its users and by Musk himself.
Venezuela’s minister for communication and information, Freddy Ñáñez, reported that X has not presented the documents requested from it by Venezuela’s government which would allow X to resume operations in the country. “Venezuela can live without X, I guarantee it,” commented Minister Ñáñez.
Musk drew the ire of progressive movements worldwide when, in 2020, shortly after a US-backed military coup overthrew Bolivia’s socialist President Evo Morales, Musk posted “”We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” The post was shared on the Twitter platform. In 2022, Musk purchased the platform and subsequently renamed it X.
Since then, numerous investigative articles have detailed Musk’s ties to the US military industrial complex. Following Venezuela’s election of July 28 and the victory of the incumbent, President Maduro, Musk posted a series of messages attempting to incite protests against the results and referring to the president as a “dictator.”
In addition, Musk posted an old video depicting the theft of a washing machine and claimed that it showed ballot boxes in a Venezuelan voting center during the July 28 election day. The falsehood of the post was so clear that X, despite being owned by Musk, was forced to attach a note to the post indicating that it was misleading. The post was subsequently deleted.
Ñáñez detailed how, to date, X has not provided the appropriate documents requested by the Venezuela’s National Telecommunications Commission, CONATEL, which took the decision to suspend the social network for 10 days. Those 10 days have now elapsed.
The future of social media in Venezuela
During an interview earlier this week, Minister Ñáñez said that “what is going to start happening in Venezuela is that new social media platforms are going to come in. The social networks that China has are infinitely superior.”
The minister was asked whether X will be available again in Venezuela or if X has decided to withdraw its service from the country. “What will happen in Venezuela is that new social media platforms will enter,” responded the minister.
“What is appropriate is that this company present its representative in the country and accept Venezuelan laws,” added Ñáñez.
YouTube Bans Diosdado Cabello’s Channel Con el Mazo Dando, Social Media Haters Detained
Minister Ñáñez also clarified that according to “digital consumption in the country, the social network that is most used in the country is Facebook, with 22 million profiles, of which more than 18 million are active, unlike X, where the majority of active accounts … are bots.”
According to the minister, there are 8 million TikTok accounts in Venezuela, 7.9 million users on Instagram, and only 2.7 million accounts on X.
Social media platforms, commented the minister for communication and information, “have reached the point of being able to whisper to each person in each country what the algorithm determines that person wants to hear, thereby dissolving the possibility of a collective truth, of a more or less stable state of opinion, and therefore dissolving the ability to have governance within the social spectrum.”
Special by Orinoco Tribune staff