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Establishing Twitter's Presence in Africa
- Fellshard 5y ago> Twitter’s mission is to serve the public conversation And in the first several words, they've already lied through their teeth. It is very clear that Twitter's primary desire is to steer and shape conversation. One look at the 'passive voice' editorializing of their 'trending' feed is all it takes to confirm that.
- kgin 5y agoCan you give an example, I’m not sure I understand
- zokier 5y agoI don't agree with you, but "steering and shaping" could very well be construed "to serve the public conversation". Nothing in that servitude implies passive impartiality.
- dang 5y agoPlease don't post in the flamewar style to HN. It's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Fellshard 5y agoGiven the primary link was to a Twitter press release, I think it is fair to address the supporting claims the release makes. Not intending to flame or provoke.
- dang 5y agoI wouldn't describe the GP as "addressing claims". It's denunciatory rhetoric, which is the flamewar style we don't want here. Thoughtful critique is something quite different, and would be fine.
- rgovostes 5y agoBecause Twitter has really elevated the level of conversation in the West.
- dang 5y agoPlease don't be snarky. It's against the site guidelines because it's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- coldtea 5y agoYeah, if Africa lacked something it was Twitter
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- noofen 5y agoI wonder why they didn't go with "How Twitter is Colonizing Africa"
- bobthepanda 5y agoAfricans already have access to twitter, they’re on the same Internet as everyone else. This post is about hiring in Africa; if they’re getting the negative effects already they may as well try and get the positive benefits, like high paying multinational jobs, out of it.
- tacker2000 5y agoHooray to the next woke “mission” trying to “save” the “doomed” continent!
- munk-a 5y agoI honestly got absolutely none of that sentiment reading their press release - it reads just like "Twitter is opening a new office in Mexico to specifically support spanish language speakers - we chose Mexico as it has recently been appointed as the lead on the central american economic council..." I think you're reading too much into Africa when a much simpler explanation is that Ghana isn't a country you can paint as "a developing African nation" - it's a stable country[1] with a rapidly growing middle class and low CoL. Post soviet collapse eastern europe had a lot of highly trained folks and extremely low CoL so Microsoft and other folks moved into that area aggressively - Ghana looks like it's the next good market to go into aggressively.
- dang 5y agoPlease don't post in the flamewar style to HN, or use the site for ideological battle. We're trying for something else here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ronsor 5y agoWelp. Africa is doomed now.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- qmarchi 5y agoFor all of the snark that is coming from other commenters, I'm excited to see more engineering talent being pulled to more diverse locations than "the Bay Area" and the rest of the US. Technology and Engineering is not limited to one or two countries, and having a presence in a place the is missing opportunity seems like a win. Admittedly, Twitter is not my first choice of employer, but it could've been worse. Could've been Facebook.
- peytn 5y agoI can’t find any engineering job postings on their careers site with the location “Ghana Remote.” Hopefully those roles are coming soon.
- atlasunshrugged 5y agoAs am I. The product is already available on the continent. It'll be great to have locals providing input on shaping it for the local environment and giving their perspective. Plus, hopefully high paying jobs!
- TwelveNights 5y agoHN has always felt rather US-centric and IMO it really reflects in the response that this type of news gets. For Twitter, increasing its international presence and talent pool is a big win. The community stands to benefit in the opportunities the tech giant can provide.
- brobdingnagians 5y agoTotally agree with this. I think it will help develop the capital and talent to accelerate more new tech startups in Africa. Developers with more money and more experience with large projects will mean that some of them will go on to start their own companies, sometimes as competing companies, that will focus on local needs and culture.
- cirgue 5y agoThe utter absence of self awareness on the part of Twitter is really impressive. Like it took either enormous brass balls, monumental stupidity, or enthusiastic self deception to write and stand behind that press release. Twitter exists to make money from ad revenue and has consistently demonstrated zero credible concern for any objective that isn’t furthering that interest.
- CynicusRex 5y ago“Then you have these tone-deaf millionaires going around imposing their preferences, like Twitter's Jack Dorsey and Jay-Z investing 500 bitcoin toward bitcoin development in Africa which will supposedly empower its population. Vested interests anyone?” —https://www.cynicusrex.com/file/cryptocultscience.html https://www.cynicusrex.com/file/cryptocultscience.html
- drngxn 5y agoDigital colonialism
- atlasunshrugged 5y agoYeah, much better for them to not hire any people in Africa and just have their product there! /s
- nicbou 5y agoTo me, it seems preferable to the alternative: a brain drain towards a few tech hubs in the West.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- aberkowitz 5y agoI spent a year in Ghana in 2017, and I had the pleasure of meeting numerous software engineers and tech entrepreneurs who were doing extremely high quality work for 1-2k USD / month (if they were lucky). Having companies like twitter on the African continent will provide massive economic opportunity, and social mobility.
- atlasunshrugged 5y agoAny recommendations on places to visit and stay for someone thinking of spending a few months in Africa to better understand the region? Likely this summer/fall (Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Ethiopia are high on my list as I've done minimal traveling in the region outside the south).
- aberkowitz 5y agoYou could honestly spend a month in any of those countries, and barely scratch the surface of all the cultures, people, and ecosystems. I would highly recommend Ghana as a base, due to its stability, infrastructure, and low corruption. If you send me an email (link in profile), I'd be happy to connect you with interesting people in most of the countries you listed as well as Kenya.
- atlasunshrugged 5y agoThanks for the offer, I'll send you an email shortly!
- true_religion 5y agoDepends on what you want to do. There are waterfalls, national parks, mini safaris, night clubs, beaches, culinary festivals and art events. There is always something going on.
- filleduchaos 5y agoIf you'd like to visit Lagos, shoot me an email (me at [username] dot com) and I can send you some tips/places you might be interested in. (I think the weirdest tip I have about Lagos is that it's actually a decent whale-watching spot. We get humpback whales in particular from May-ish to September-ish, much more in the latter months.)
- dsg42 5y agoReally great move by Twitter. There's lots of amazing programmers in African countries like Ghana and Nigeria, but not enough employers are taking advantage. I suspect Twitter will be the first of many companies to start hiring in the region.
- seriousquestion 5y ago> Twitter’s mission is to serve the public conversation How's that going, would you say?
- barbazoo 5y agoI know it's pessimistic but that's what I thought as well. This post isn't about the Twitter service becoming available I know, but still, starting a presence there will probably increase usage which in turn will probably add a couple of countries to the "divided by social media" list.
- dang 5y agoPlease don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments here. Perhaps you don't owe $BigCo better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- fshbbdssbbgdd 5y agoA lot of people seem to think this is bad because it looks like colonialism. I think that’s a bad take. Indeed there’s an evil history of western exploitation of Africans. That consists of territorial conquest, slavery, stripping of natural resources. Every country that managed to get out of poverty did it by moving up the value chain from subsistence farming to eg. textile manufacturing to eg. electronics. Here, Twitter is hiring knowledge workers and paying them a good wage. They aren’t enslaving anyone. Ghana is growing a middle class, entering the tech industry, and will be able to enjoy a bigger share of the wealth created in the global economy. It’s great news.
- Grieving 5y agoIf that growing middle class becomes dependent on westerners for employment, they will become westernized. Colonization can be extremely 'peaceful'.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 1986 5y agoGhana is a former British colony (Gold Coast) that gained independence in 1957, it is already highly westernized, certainly in Accra (where I have to assume Twitter GH is going to be based - maybe Kumasi?). I'm firmly anti colonialist but I don't think this is that at all.
- imtringued 5y agoThis is absurd. I don't know why but modern politics is just plain self destructive. You get people like this criticizing even the most minor form of foreign employment from a western corporation but absolutely nobody gives a crap when foreign aid is used to subsidize weapons manufacturers and directly destabilize a country by providing perverse incentives. You dismiss dependence on westerners for employment but do you know what the alternative is? The alternative is to do everything yourself and there is no way you can compete against western nations because they band together while every African nation tries to stay independent and dislikes their neighbor just as much as they dislike westerners.
- hyperrail 5y agoMicrosoft has has software development centers in Kenya and Nigeria for a couple years now. [1] I'm glad to see other western tech companies moving into sub-Saharan Africa. Hope it's a trend - at MSFT we had some success there! [1] https://news.microsoft.com/en-xm/features/furthering-our-investment-in-africa-microsoft-opens-first-africa-development-centre-in-kenya-and-nigeria/ https://news.microsoft.com/en-xm/features/furthering-our-inv...
- aberkowitz 5y agoFrom what I hear, Microsoft has been extremely active in hiring tech and skilled workers in Kenya this year. Really hoping they keep it up!
- curiousmindz 5y agoIn South Africa too. They even have two Azure Data Centers, there.
- numbsafari 5y agoLooking at the top 3 US Public Cloud providers, Microsoft has a lot to be proud of [1]. I think Microsoft's old-line enterprise/government software business has given them a sales lead over the others, but they've also made big capital investments here in local infrastructure. I think there's a massive, missed opportunity to build renewable-resource powered data centers to drive the compute tasks needed elsewhere, investing in local talent and infrastructure at the same time. [1] https://twitter.com/numbsafari/status/1357404669123981314 https://twitter.com/numbsafari/status/1357404669123981314
- xyzzy21 5y agoEven the Western world would be better off without Twitter. Expanding its cancer to Africa seems like Crime Against Humanity at this point.
- bogomipz 5y ago>"To truly serve the public conversation, we must be more immersed in the rich and vibrant communities that drive the conversations taking place every day across the African continent." So they correctly acknowledge that those communities are already engaged in conversations. How does encouraging these same folks to Tweet at each other improve upon the way they are already conversing? Twitter seems to have appropriated the word "conversation" the same way Facebook has done for the word "friend". That is to say completely redefined it to suit their own business objectives. I'm glad they're hiring in Africa. There's tons of really smart people there doing interesting things. It's also a very young place per capita. Why couldn't they just say as much though and leave it at that? Instead they decided couch the whole thing in this cringeworthy bit of "noblesse oblige."
- DoreenMichele 5y agoAligned with our existing WFH policies, we look forward to welcoming and onboarding our new team members remotely so that we can make an immediate impact while we explore the opportunity to open an office in Ghana in the future. Why Ghana? As a champion for democracy, Ghana is a supporter of free speech, online freedom, and the Open Internet, of which Twitter is also an advocate. I'm impressed with how much they have thought about some of the logistics here. If you are running a business and trying to learn how to grow bigger, this is something to pay attention to and contemplate.
- f1refly 5y agoI'm more impressed how anyone can write that last sentence and not die of laughter. Twitter - the bastion of online freedom and free speech. Whoevers brainchild this is perfected mental gymnastics to mastery.
- DoreenMichele 5y agoI'm a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and rape. I routinely speak on such topics in order to educate people and try to advocate for survivors, among other things. I am routinely accused of being "a rape apologist." I have no idea if Twitter is really a bastion of online free speech or not. But I do know that if you do anything meaningful in this world, people will drag you for it and one of the most common attacks is to claim you are doing the exact opposite of your intentions, whether that is true or not.
- sneak 5y agoTwitter censors both what you are allowed to post (far in excess of what is legally prohibited), but, more importantly (and the reason I left after a dozen years on the platform) they censor search, too, deciding for themselves that they know better than you regarding what you should be allowed to read. Twitter espousing free expression is sort of like Google espousing privacy. It's farce, plain and simple.
- kristjank 5y agoYup, we definitely need to have one of the biggest groupthink platforms instated in one of the most unstable regions of the Old World. Great job, guys! /s
- spoonjim 5y agoThere are a lot of Ghanaians in Silicon Valley (relative to other African countries). I wonder how many of them will take this opportunity to move back home. One problem though is at least right now you’d be tied to one employer.
- true_religion 5y agoA lot might. Thanks to covid a lot of Ghanaians simply returned home to work remotely. The embassy even suggested it was the best course of action.
- bobthepanda 5y agoThis is generally how startup ecosystems start, though, with knowledgable people leaving established companies and hopefully starting up or contributing new ones.
- dang 5y agoAll: please don't post snarky and/or unsubstantive comments and please don't post in the flamewar style. None of that is what HN is for. It's tedious, and it leads to repetitive, lower-quality threads. Perhaps you don't owe $BigCo better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- inglor_cz 5y agoYeah, I deleted mine. IDK what is it about Twitter that goads me into speaking Snarkish. Distrust WRT their intentions? The general atmosphere of the place? Around 2009 (the failed Iranian Green Revolution), social networks felt on the side of freedom. Nowadays they fill me with negativity.
- cblconfederate 5y ago> Ghana is a supporter of free speech, online freedom, and the Open Internet, of which Twitter is also an advocate Well this sounds great, maybe Ghana will teach twitter their values. Sounds like a great move overall
- S53Vflnr4n 5y agoTwitter infects Africa.
- vmception 5y agoI think worldwide that this entire discussion about Africa is too reductive. Like, even here the title and the African director are writing about the African community but referring to an improving sector within Ghana. This in turn has the rest of us continuing to talk about Africa in an unnuanced and defensive or unproductive way. A regional data center serving the African continent is establishing presence in Africa. This would be the same standard as other infrastructure projects in other continents. A hiring practice or office in a city in one country is establishing a presence in that country. This would be the same standard as other company expansions in other countries. I think this is a humble ask, as people are excited about attention to the African continent and integration to the global growth community, however there are very many hurdles towards a unified African market and I don't really think thats the focus or most productive goal. It is a fiction to refer to it as such for a place with 50 to 100 regional markets, almost infinite permutations with their own problems and benefits.
- kaladin_1 5y agoThe comments on the thread surprises me. Some seem to imply that this a negative development. Whereas in Africa here people are happy for this development. I can assure you that the only eyebrows raised are so because every country feels Twitter should have come to theirs. This is big win for Ghana. In fact, many Nigerians are chastising their government at the moment for not being able to attract Twitter due to their instability and corruption
- Ekaros 5y agoGood for them, that is pulling money from big companies. To local economies with minimal spending of natural resources. Sometimes you have to work with evil to do good for local community. I just hope they have sense not get too involved on platform itself. Reasonable out-sourcing can be pretty good for a country. I just hope Twitter doesn't steal market share from local companies with this...
- darkwizard42 5y agoWas kind of surprised they didn't pick a place like Kenya (Nairobi is a huge international hub). The reasons for Ghana seem great, but again, wasn't the first choice I thought they might make!
- throwawaysea 5y agoI understand Twitter is already accessible to African users, and this blog post is about expanding Twitter's employment presence in Africa. That said, I really don't want to see Twitter or other Western technology companies extend their tentacles further into Asia or Africa. The immense influence these Silicon Valley companies have in shaping public conversation and culture threatens all other cultures and diversity of thought globally. The adoption of Twitter amounts to digital colonization, a vehicle for cultural globalization that homogenizes societies in the shape of American progressive culture. I really find Twitter's blog post to be deceptive and tone deaf. For example consider this: > As a champion for democracy, Ghana is a supporter of free speech, online freedom, and the Open Internet, of which Twitter is also an advocate. Twitter heavily censors moderates and conservatives in America on any controversial topic that is current - whether that is COVID-19, or gender identity, or immigration, or whatever else. Africa is a lot more conservative than Silicon Valley and holds very different viewpoints on life, morality, ethics, law, politics, etc. Is Twitter going to censor African users and steer their speech as well? If so how can it possibly claim to be an advocate for free speech at all? Another problematic statement: > We still have much to learn but we are excited to listen, learn, and engage. Public conversation is essential to solving problems, building shared ideas, and pushing us all forward together. When has Twitter ever listened to those who think differently from its employee base? I don't think Twitter has listened or learned at all, even in the US where it is reasonable to expect that they would understand their user base better and cater to all viewpoints better. Instead, their playbook seems to be to impose the worldview of their employees and vocal activists on the entire planet. Whether intended or not, the effect of Twitter's adoption in other nations is propagandist, and I find it to be as repulsive as physical colonization. I hope users in Africa are alert enough to realize that they should use a local platform, or at least one that is more honestly in favor of free speech, rather than one originating from Silicon Valley. European leaders are already waking up to the existential threat Western influence poses to their culture (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threat-american-universities.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threa...), and China was of course well ahead of other nations in seeing the threat of cultural erasure coming from America. Africa, a continent on the rise and on a path towards global prominence, should be similarly wise.