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Uganda Levies Social Media Tax to Prevent Gossip

posted by mrpg on Sunday June 03 2018, @10:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the let's-gossip dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Ugandu has reached rock bottom and yet has started to dig even deeper with the recent announcement that a daily fee of 200 shillings will be levied to use social media. This is not the first time a country has attempted to have ISPs charge a separate fee for social network access.

Today, Uganda's parliament passed a controversial "social media tax." It will consist of a daily fee of about 200 shillings (5 US cents) levied on anyone who uses social networking and messaging apps and platforms like Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter. According to Trading Economics, in 2016, Uganda had a per-capita income of $666.10, so this isn't an insubstantial tax.

President Yoweri Museveni was a vocal supporter of and advocate the bill. He believes that social media encourages "gossip," according to BBC News. The law will go into effect as of July 1st, but it's not clear how the government will monitor its citizens or collect the tax.

Also at the BBC

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 03 2018, @09:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 03 2018, @09:13PM (#688102)

    if you're corrupt, you don't want people to organize themselves.

    On the other hand, you probably don't want people that probably don't know better to start murdering either.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/13/myanmar-un-blames-facebook-for-spreading-hatred-of-rohingya [theguardian.com]

    And for Uganda, US idiots have already fucked up that country,

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uganda_Anti-Homosexuality_Act,_2014#Criticism_of_US_evangelists [wikipedia.org]

    So the government is 100% correct. Facebook and "social media" is a major method of spreading BULLSHIT to people that don't know any better. Just look at US and the last election and how easily some people were swayed by bullshit, and that is supposedly an educated country.

    Taxing is difficult (you need an organizied government to do that) and costly (you need to pay people to do that), Taxing social media firms is easy, so that is the way to go.

    Except it's taxing people's connections to those companies, not those companies.

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