Afrihost will block you on Twitter to protect their brand

A few weeks after I reported Afrihost and Mybroadband to ISPA for violating ISPA’s code of conduct, I noticed the following on my Twitter timeline:

Initially I thought that the unavailable Tweets are a result of Afrihost deleting them. But it then turns out that Afrihost went a step further and blocked my account on Twitter:

As a paying Afrihost customer I then reached out to Afrihost support to get clarity for my social media ban and apparently Afrihost’s Twitter account can not be used to asked questions and is only used to show a squeaky clean brand, and my issues would taint the company’s image:

While I raised valid and factual customer support concerns with Afrihost, their response of “It’s not personal” is far from the truth and Afrihosts’ intentions and ethics are highly questionable when censoring customers on social media platforms.

The Afrihost Wikipedia “Edit War”

Shortly after lodging my ISPA complaint against Afrihost, I noticed that their Wikipedia page received “heavy edits” to remove “unfavourable and malicious” content about Afrihost’s network outages during 2015 and 2016 which also resulted in two ISPA rulings and fines. The Wikipedia user “Suveshnan” aggressively defended the company and undid several edits which were factual (feel free to visit the history page to look at the edits):

After I requested assistance from Wikipedia editors, it turns out that Suveshnan is an Afrihost employee and received a warning for conflict of interest editing and non-disclosure of commercial interest:

Why the “Wikipedia editing war”?

There was no real good reason for it other than attempting to distort reality and protect the company from negative feedback. The contentious part was the highlighted section below which was removed several times:

Afrihost could have really leveraged from the initial edit by highlighting that the ISPA complaint and fines created the clarity the company needed to improve their network services and better engage with customers. Based on the recent engagements with their CEO and their General Manager (both contacted me via email), I can honestly say that the company has not learned from past mistakes, continues to patronise and belittle customers and actively mute voices critical of their conduct and services.

It is a true pity as a company like Afrihost could have adopted a more honest stance but rather chose the difficult route of deception, censorship and manipulation.