home Governance, social media, Stats Furious Ugandans resort to VPN’s to dodge outrageous social media tax

Furious Ugandans resort to VPN’s to dodge outrageous social media tax

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Ugandans are resorting to Virtual Private Network (VPN) to bypass paying the daily excise duty charge on Over-The-Top (OTT) services to evade the infamous social media tax that came into effect at midnight, July 1, 2018.

According to a random survey on social media done by the Daily Monitor, several people had resorted to V

The Daily Monitor on Saturday conducted an opinion poll on its Twitter handle engaging its audience on how prepared they were to pay the social media tax.

According to the poll results, 19 per cent of the 581 followers who participated said they would spend less time on social media, 11 per cent said they would stop using social media while 70 per cent said they would resort to using VPN.

Major telecoms providers MTN, Airtel, and Africell, issued a joint statement informing customers of how to pay the new tax with mobile money services of MTN and Airtel.

Internet penetration stands at just 22% in Uganda, according to the World Bank. Social networks constitute the internet for those already online, with Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter being the most popular apps.

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James Barnley

I’m the editor of the DomainingAfrica. I write about internet and social media, focusing mainly on Domains. As a subscriber to my newsletter, you’ll get a lot of information on Domain Issues, ICANN, new gtld’s, Mobile technology and social media.