Kenya’s National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC), has announced a seven-day ultimatum for Meta to act following a report it allowed more than a dozen hateful political ads on Facebook.
The National Cohesion Agency was responding to a report by the advocacy organisation Global Witness and Foxglove, a legal non-profit agency, which pointed to Facebook’s inability to detect hate speech ads.
The Global Witness investigation backed up NCIC’s allegations that Meta, Facebook’s parent company, was reluctant to remove and block offensive content, thereby aggravating an already dangerous political situation.
The NCIC has now urged Meta to increase moderation before, during, and after the elections, giving it one week to comply or face being barred from entering the country.
The NCIC, which was founded in the midst of the 2007 post-election violence that killed 1300 Kenyans, has among its powers to provide recommendations on corrective action against people or businesses inciting and propagating hate speech. It outlawed the use of some coded words that were alleged to be fuelling ethnic tensions a few months ago.
“Facebook is in violation of the laws of our country. They have allowed themselves to be a vector of hate speech and incitement, misinformation and disinformation,” said NCIC commissioner Danvas Makori.
Global Witness and Foxglove also called on Meta to halt political ads, and to use “break glass” measures — the stricter emergency moderation methods it used to stem misinformation and civil unrest during the 2020 U.S. elections.
In Kenya, Facebook has a penetration of 82%, making it the second most widely used social network after WhatsApp.
This comes as Kenya is eight days to its general election.
Earlier last month, Odanga Madung, a fellow of The Mozilla Foundation, led an allegation that TikTok was allowing the spread of wrong information on its platform which, back then, caused political tensions in Kenya.
According to a publication, more than ten dozens of the most-viewed videos on TikTok were found to include hate speech, incitement, and political disinformation. This violated TikTok’s policy on hate speech and the posting of discriminatory, offensive, and false content.
Social media sites such as Twitter, WhatsApp, and Facebook have previously been criticised for fostering disinformation and propaganda and negatively influencing elections.
The calls to action on social media come amid heated political debate, diverging viewpoints and direct hate speech from politicians and citizens ahead of the August 9 elections.