The Executive Director of the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD), Malam Y.Z. Ya’u, has raised concerns over the growing control of global social media giants such as Facebook (Meta) and X (formerly Twitter).
He described them as monopolies with serious implications for transparency, accountability, and users’ data rights.
Ya’u made the remarks in Kano on Wednesday while delivering a public lecture titled “Monopolies to Fediverse: A Peep into an Alternative Social Media Space.”
He noted that although social media platforms enable education, business, and civic engagement, their dominance poses fundamental risks to freedom, privacy, and democracy.
“Facebook and X have dominated the digital space and have become real global monopolies. Between 2005 and 2025, Facebook acquired over 100 startup tech companies while X swallowed more than 70,” he said.
Ya’u accused the platforms of operating without transparency or public oversight. “Unlike open-source software, no one has access to the source codes of these platforms. Their reasoning and decision-making processes are hidden. The owners are accountable to no one but themselves and are driven solely by profit,” he said.
He said this level of control enables misuse of users’ data and manipulation of political processes.
“As we use social media, we deposit metadata about ourselves. That is why Google and Facebook know more about us than we know ourselves,” he said.
“They collect massive amounts of data — often without consent — and sell it to advertisers, political manipulators, AI developers, and others. This violates all data protection norms.”
On Artificial Intelligence, Ya’u warned that it could worsen unconsented data collection. “AI requires intimate personal data for training. The more it grows, the more data it needs, and the more invasive it becomes,” he said.
He also alleged that the platforms engage in discrimination and bias, citing recent digital rights violations against Palestinians.
“Elon Musk has been known to promote racist and neo-Nazi views and allows his platform to spread such content.
Mega tech companies are known to support Israel’s actions in Gaza while suppressing pro-Palestine voices,” he said, quoting figures from the Sada Social Center for Digital Rights which documented over 1,247 digital violations targeting Palestinians in June 2025 alone.
Ya’u explained that the centralized nature of these platforms gives them power to control who speaks and who is banned, adding that this makes it easy for governments to shut down platforms within their countries.
As an alternative, he introduced dComms, a new platform CITAD is developing based on the Fediverse model, built on local hosting and community ownership.
“We are implementing a version of Fediverse called dComms, combining the social networking features of Mastodon with the messaging functionalities of Matrix,” he said.
The lecture, attended by academics, civil society actors, journalists, and tech community members, explored how decentralized, community-owned platforms could challenge the dominance of profit-driven digital spaces.