Dinosaurs in the social media age

The invasion of Ukraine is being called the first information war. It’s one Putin, and SA’s own out-of-touch ANC, have already lost

Zaporizhzhia — another word the world had never heard until last week. Now we know how to pronounce the name of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.

Russian soldiers fired at a nuclear power plant — let that sink in for a moment. In the same country as Chernobyl, nogal. The world found out immediately — through TikTok videos showing the fire that broke out and the streaking tracer shells seemingly aimed at the hulking towers housing the six nuclear reactors. Sorry, Facebook, you’re last war’s social medium.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is already being called the first information war. As I’ve written elsewhere in this edition, the coverage has been in real time, battle by battle — the livestreaming of a war in an age of ubiquitous smartphones.

Last week Putin banned Facebook, Twitter and independent media houses in Russia, and imposed a 15-year jail term as a threat for publishing “fake news” about the invasion.

The Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr, who previously broke the Cambridge Analytica scandal, writes that banning information in 2022 is impossible. “It’s like trying to ban oxygen … Only a fool would make predictions right now, but here’s one anyway: it proves that Putin, the founding father of what’s come to be known as ‘information war’, just lost the information war.”

So have our ANC politicians, especially the ANC’s nihilistic spokesperson, Pule Mabe.

Twitter is awash with scorn for his tone-deaf comments about the “draconian decision” by the EU to “impose sanctions on Russia”.

Mabe also criticised MultiChoice for “unilaterally withdrawing Russian TV”. Did he condemn Putin for nearly causing another Chernobyl? No, his indignant venom was reserved for MultiChoice’s “censorship act” which was “quite bizarre and lacks any legal or humane justification”.

Amazingly, the spokesperson of the ruling party clearly missed the news that MultiChoice actually refused to pull the feed the day before, but the RT channel was halted by its satellite provider in Luxembourg, which is in the EU and upheld European bans.

Redi Tlhabi tweeted at Mabe: “Do you read ANYTHING at all? ANYTHING? Your comms team? 4IR ministers and former ministers know nothing about international feed and how it works? You embarrass the nation in big and small things.”

ANC election heads Jessie Duarte and Fikile Mbalula have complained that the party lost votes because it didn’t get enough coverage before the local election last year. But it turns out it doesn’t need traditional media to make a fool of itself.

What gives with transport minister Mbalula’s weird comment that he “just landed in Ukraine” and his retweeting of patent Russian propaganda that it

“is fighting Nazism in Ukraine”?

Demonstrating how out of touch he is, he was using Twitter. Sorry, Twitter, just like Facebook you’re last war’s social medium.

Mabe clearly missed the news that the RT channel was halted by its satellite provider