The ANC Youth League (ANCYL) will take action against those who have “falsely posed” as its president, Julius Malema, on social networking site Twitter.
Charges will be laid with the police and Internet regulation bodies, says spokesperson Floyd Shivambu.
An ANCYL statement, issued yesterday, calling for the shutdown of Twitter, caused an explosion of hilarity on the network, with jibes being poked at the league, its president and Shivambu.
“Wanting to close Twitter is a highly ambitious goal,” says Democratic Alliance shadow minister of communications Natasha Michael. “It is obvious that they don't understand what social networks are and, more importantly, the Internet, especially in the information age.”
Speaking to ITWeb late yesterday, Shivambu said the ANCYL would be indicating today “where and when it would be laying the charges and what the nature of the charges are”.
In its statement, the league said it was concerned about the continuous creation of fake Twitter accounts in Malema's name.
“There are computer hackers who have created twitter [sic] accounts in the name of the president and recurrently posting misleading messages,” it said.
The statement goes on to say the ANCYL has on more than one occasion reported these impersonators and hackers, yet no action has been taken against them by the Twitter administrators.
It would now approach the “relevant authorities to report these hackers and call for the closer [sic] of twitter if its administrators are not able to administer reports for violation of basic human rights and integrity”.
“Those who are hacking systems and impersonating the ANCYL leadership should immediately stop doing so, because the laws of this country will come very hard on them,” the ANCYL statement read.
Shivambu said the ANCYL has no official social media strategy.
“We do not use these things, such as Facebook and Twitter; the only official thing is the link from the ANC's Web site,” he said.
A regulatory lawyer, who asked not to be named, says: “Trying to close down Twitter would be extremely difficult.”
He says even laying charges of identity theft would be close to impossible as the servers are located outside SA. Twitter does have verification procedures in place to determine if someone is who they say they are, he adds.
Share
