Government targets social media platforms

The Kenyan Government is planning to make social media platforms establish physical offices locally, as part of a broader strategy to combat what it calls ‘digital abuse’, reports the Kenyan Wall Street. Last Thursday, the principal secretary in the Interior Ministry, Raymond Omollo, convened a meeting with representatives from telcos and social media companies. He informed them that the government was committed to strengthening its policies on digital media platforms to stem the proliferation of ‘harmful content’. Google and Microsoft are the only giant tech companies with local offices in Kenya. The Ministry of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs also said it was concerned that Kenyans online are ‘misinforming the world’ about the activities of the Kenyan Government. In April 2024, the ICT Ministry told Parliament that popular short video platform TikTok would provide quarterly compliance reports to the government. The move was in response to several attempts to get the app banned in Kenya, including one where government officials were banned from the platform. A Kenyan, Felix Kibet, sued X last Wednesday, accusing it of permitting hate speech, incitement to violence and explicit content. He wants the country’s Attorney-General, Dorcas Oduor, to ensure that the platform was not used to infringe the constitutional rights of others. Kibet wants X to delete the content he deems contrary to the law, as well as the removal of accounts that are not tagged with official names. Several European countries have also contemplated banning X for ‘promoting extremist content’ in the name of free speech.

Full report in The Kenyan Wall Street