Nairobi.- The Kenyan National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) announced today that it will recommend the suspension of the social network Facebook in the country if this does not remedy the proliferation of hate speech in seven days ahead of the August 9 elections.
“If Facebook does not comply with the recommendations in seven days that have been sent to it, we will request that (…) its operations be suspended in the country,” NCIC Commissioner Danvas Makori told a news conference today.
As Makori confirmed to Efe, the NCIC has already contacted the Kenya Communications Authority (CA), the body that regulates the communications sector in the country and has the powers to make that suspension effective.
The notice came after researchers from the Global Witness and Floxglove organizations revealed that the social network “failed to detect hate speech ads in the country’s two official languages: English and Swahili“.
As a test, the authors of the research requested the post to Facebook out of a total of twenty advertisements that included examples of hate speech and incitement to violence in both languages.
The advertisement, which was always removed by the researchers before its final publicationdodged the controls of the social network, despite the fact that it included a “dehumanizing” speech, comparing specific tribal groups with animals and calling for rape, decapitation and killings.
Contacted by Efe, a Meta spokesperson maintained that the platform had been implemented and reinforced before the elections “extensive measures” to prevent the use of hate speech and “incendiary content”.
The company acknowledged, however, that despite having “special teams of Swahili speakers” and experts focused on voting, “there will be things we miss” and said it would address these issues as soon as possible.
The spread of hate speech and disinformation Through social networks in Kenya during the electoral period, it has been monitored by different organizations in the country, where past votes have triggered episodes of ethnic violence.
The two main presidential candidates for the elections on August 9 are former Prime Minister Raila Odinga and current Vice President William Ruto.
Kenya is often identified by the international community as a stabilizing power in the troubled Horn of Africa region and a faithful partner of the West.
We recommend you read:
In addition, Kenya is the sixth largest economic power on the continent and one of its fastest developing economies, growing at 5.7% per year from 2015 to 2019.
