Lai insists on social media regulation, says ‘fake news’ affected Hillary Clinton in US election

Lai Mohammed, minister of information and culture, says fake news influenced the outcome of the United States presidential election, especially for Hillary Clinton.

In 2016, Donald Trump defeated Clinton, a former secretary of state, to emerge as the 45th president of the US.

Speaking on Tuesday when he appeared before the house of representatives committees on communication, justice, information and culture, and national security and intelligence, Mohammed said most countries are formulating policies to regulate the operations of social media.

He insisted that social media platforms are profit-making ventures that must be duly registered.

“I know that both the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) and Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) monitor, on a daily basis, not just these platforms but the entire broadcasting environment. But the thing about social media is that it caught the entire world by storm,” he said.

“As we speak today, UK, EU are all struggling to come by with laws to regulate social media; Australia, Singapore, same.

“The thing about social media is that when they came, they were neither communication nor information. They were operating under the radar.

“It is only recently that governments all over the world started realising that ‘wait a minute, these people are doing business. They are not licenced neither here or anywhere in the world?’ And they said ‘no, this must stop. And you are causing a lot of trouble.’

“It was said that Hillary Clinton lost the last election because of social media. It was fake news. The first fake news was that she was suffering from very bad health. The second was that she had ties with the terrorists, I think the third fake news was that the Pope did not support her or that the Pope supported Trump. These were all fake news.

“So the issue of fake news is not today and the struggle to regulate social media is not today.”

Mohammed said the NBC and NCC will continue to monitor the operations of social media platforms in the country, adding that they must all register to do business in Nigeria.