Following my recent article on Big Tech’s mounting legal challenges, it’s clear that 2025 is more than just a year of lawsuits. It is the year platform regulation became fully geopolitical.
Something is shifting—globally, loudly, and legally.
From Washington to Abuja and Nairobi to Brussels, 2025 is shaping up to be the year when digital platform regulation fully enters geopolitical territory. What used to be polite conversations about privacy policies and content moderation have become a high-stakes contest over sovereignty, accountability, and power.
At the heart of it all are the tech behemoths: Meta, Google, X (formerly Twitter), and the growing determination of governments to rein them in. These platforms have changed society in many ways since the early 2010s, and governments around the world have watched how the infrastructure that powers online public discourse has unseated governments and empowered citizens to organize, mobilize, and boldly hold their governments to account.
This democratization of information has also shifted the game for many traditional businesses that once dominated the information ecosystem.
Digital disruption has become a major global concern, and today, many countries are asserting regulations within their territories in unprecedented ways.
Last week, the European Union digital platform regulators announced significant fines against two of the biggest names in tech: Apple and Meta, up to $760 million. Apple was fined for restricting app developers from directing users to cheaper alternatives outside of the App Store. Meta, on the other hand, was fined €200 million for giving users a choice to accept personalized ads or pay to opt out.
This major regulatory shift is happening not just in the EU but also in Africa and around the world.
Nigeria vs Meta
On Friday, April 25, 2025, a Nigerian tribunal upheld a historic $220 million fine against Meta (Facebook) and WhatsApp, following a 38-month investigation by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC). The ruling accused Meta of sharp practices: unauthorized data sharing, user discrimination, and market dominance abuse.
What makes this different?
For one, it wasn’t just a slap on the wrist. It was a full assertion of Nigeria’s digital sovereignty, a declaration that global platforms must comply with national laws, respect user rights, and stop treating African users as second-class citizens. This case sends a message: you can no longer do in Abuja what you wouldn’t dare in Brussels.
This case is also significant when compared to how the Nigerian government handled its inconvenience with Twitter’s dominance during the nationwide #EndSARS protests in 2020. The government banned Twitter without a court order, but through an executive fiat.
Earlier in 2025, the National Assembly held a town hall meeting with civil society, media, technology companies, etc., to discuss strategies to curb disinformation and online harms. At that meeting, it was gathered that none of the technology companies were present. The conveners vowed to reconstitute the meeting, believing digital platforms must be held accountable.
Kenya vs Meta
Meanwhile, in Kenya, the High Court ruled that it had jurisdiction to hear a $2.4 billion lawsuit against Meta. The case, brought by Ethiopian petitioners and the Katiba Institute, alleges that Facebook’s algorithm amplified hate speech during the Tigray conflict in Ethiopia, contributing to real-world violence, including the death of a university professor.
Meta had argued that it shouldn’t be subject to Kenyan courts because it is a U.S.-based company. The court disagreed, pointing out that Facebook’s content moderation for East Africa was being managed out of Nairobi.
The implications are massive: Kenya affirmed that digital platforms can be held accountable locally, even if they claim global immunity.
South Africa vs Meta and Google
In South Africa, the Competition Commission found that Meta and Google engaged in anti-competitive practices that harmed local news outlets by deprioritizing South African content on their platforms.
The commission is now recommending strong remedies, such as restoring fair visibility for local media, and is threatening a 5–10% digital advertising tax if platforms fail to comply.
Separately, Meta is facing prosecution for allegedly abusing its dominance by restricting GovChat, a South African civic engagement platform, from accessing WhatsApp’s Business API. Authorities are seeking penalties of up to 10% of Meta’s local turnover.
Once again, another African country is drawing a clear line: Big Tech must play by local rules.
U.S. and EU: Rule of Law Meets Platform Power
As the U.S. Department of Justice continues to aggressively pursue antitrust cases against Google’s dominance in both search and digital advertising, the Federal Trade Commission is working to break up Meta’s empire by forcing it to divest Instagram and WhatsApp—ironically, the same WhatsApp now under fire in Nigeria and South Africa.
In the EU, landmark legislation—the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA)—has come into full force, focusing on transparency, algorithmic accountability, and protecting user rights from gatekeeping behaviors.
Enforcement is no longer theoretical. The European Union is fiercely regulating platforms and issuing major fines against Meta and Apple for breaching new digital competition rules under the DMA. Although these fines are financially modest relative to Big Tech’s revenues, they mark a pivotal shift and show that the EU is moving aggressively from rulemaking to real enforcement. As expected, the EU’s regulatory assertiveness is causing friction with Washington.
The U.S. government has increasingly pushed back, accusing Europe of disproportionately targeting American tech firms and warning that these digital rules could escalate into broader trade disputes.
Last week, Reuters quoted a White House spokesperson who said that the EU’s regulatory assertiveness is a novel form of economic extortion, which will not be tolerated by the United States.
“Extraterritorial regulations that specifically target and undermine American companies, stifle innovation, and enable censorship will be recognized as barriers to trade and a direct threat to free civil society,” the White House spokesperson said.
In February, at the closing of the global AI summit in Paris, U.S. Vice President JD Vance criticized the EU’s stringent tech regulation as an attempt to stifle AI acceleration progress. This was one primary reason the United States refused to sign the international pledge promoting safe, secure, and trustworthy AI.
For the first time in today’s digital world, platform regulation is reshaping how tech companies operate and how trade policy and economic diplomacy are negotiated between major powers.
What Makes 2025 Different?
All of these developments show three things that stand out:
- Countries like Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa are no longer waiting for Brussels or Washington to make decisions on what Big Tech is doing in their countries. They are boldly creating and enforcing their own regulatory playbooks. The Nigerian, Kenyan, and South African rulings are part of a wave, not isolated incidents.
- From Brazilian courts ordering takedowns on Twitter/X to Nigerian tribunals fining Meta to Kenyan courts asserting jurisdiction and South African commissions taking on Google and Meta, governments are wielding both democratic and strategic tools to assert digital sovereignty and hold platforms to account.
- Platforms are not just facing new rules; they are caught in the middle of growing international tensions over who gets to shape the digital economy. The tension between the U.S. and EU over digital regulation reflects a deeper contest over market dominance, trade policy, and global tech standards. In short, regulating Big Tech is no longer just about consumer protection. It’s about economic power and digital sovereignty.
What we are witnessing in 2025 isn’t just tech regulation; it is a global realignment around control of the digital public sphere. Global platforms once operated across borders with little friction and too much optimism about the democratization of information. Today, they are being politically tethered as governments around the world are no longer content to play catch-up. They want rules, leverage, and respect.
In the U.S., it’s framed as antitrust; in the EU, it’s about consumer rights and competition policy. Nigeria is echoing chants of fairness and national dignity, while Kenya is making a case for jurisdiction and accountability. In South Africa, it’s about media survival and fair markets, while Brazil is taking a stand against platforms on political disinformation concerns.
Each region has its own logic, but together, they are redrawing the map of digital power and digital trade. As the world prepares to mark World Press Freedom Day on May 3, these platform battles take on an even more profound urgency. In an age where access to information increasingly depends on private platforms and contested governance models, defending press freedom must now include rethinking who controls the digital public sphere and how.
What Happens Next?
2025 may be the year that defines how platforms behave for the next decade.
Will Meta comply with Nigeria’s tribunal ruling or challenge it?
Will the Kenyan case reshape jurisdictional norms for Big Tech?
Will South Africa’s competition rulings shift how platforms treat local content?
Will U.S. courts break up Google’s ad tech empire?
Will U.S.–EU trade tensions over digital regulation escalate into formal trade disputes?
And more importantly:
Will platform regulation remain fragmented or begin to converge into global norms?
The battle for digital platform accountability isn’t just about technology anymore. It’s about who governs speech, markets, and democracy itself. And in a week when the world commemorates World Press Freedom Day, the stakes become even clearer: Freedom of expression today is no longer just about resisting censorship; it is about shaping the infrastructures of visibility, voice, and power in the digital age.
2025 is giving us some answers.
And they are louder than ever.
Akintunde Babatunde is the Executive Director at the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID), a leading pan-African media development think tank. His work sits at the intersection of platform governance, information integrity, and digital rights in the Global South.
