Those who have been wondering why Mark Zuckerberg’s men banned blogger Ashburg Katto, Full Figure, Olaxess Isma and other yellow bus passengers from Facebook, you got served finally.

Ashburg's FB page was blocked
Ashburg’s FB page was blocked

Facebook claims that it’s no-nonsense men swung into action and eliminated Ashburg and his other ‘yellow colleagues’ because they have been seeking to manipulate public debate ahead of elections Thursday, the internet giant said Monday.

“This month, we removed a network of accounts and pages in Uganda that engaged in CIB (Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour) to target public debate ahead of the election,” Facebook’s head of communication for sub-Saharan Africa, Kezia Anim-Addo, said in an email.

“They used fake and duplicate accounts to manage pages, comment on other people’s content, impersonate users, re-share posts in groups to make them appear more popular than they were.”

Anim-Addo said the network was linked to the government ministry of information and communications technology.

“Given the impending election in Uganda, we moved quickly to investigate and take down this network.”

Sevo’s senior press secretary Don Wanyama, who saw both his Facebook and Instagram account shut down, accused the company of seeking to influence the election.

Ashburg blamed Bobi's foreign handlers for his ban.
Ashburg blamed Bobi’s foreign handlers for his ban.

“Shame on the foreign forces that think they can aid and plant a puppet leadership on Uganda by disabling online accounts of (ruling party) NRM supporters,” he said on Twitter.

“You won’t take away President Kaguta Museveni” he added, using the president’s second name.

Sevo’s online account is still active but many government officials and members of the ruling party have seen their pages taken down, including a well-known blogger and Museveni supporter, a prominent doctor and a senior official in the information ministry.

The president has long accused foreign organisations and elements of backing Bobi Wine in a bid to remove his government.

Anim-Addo said over 100 such networks seeking to manipulate public debate have been removed worldwide since 2017.