Interior Cabinet Secretary (CS) Kithure Kindiki has addressed a petition on banning of social media platform TikTok in Kenya as has been witnessed in other countries.
CS Kindiki appeared before the National Assembly Committee on Public Petitions Thursday morning to respond to Bob Ndolo, petitioner seeking TikTok ban.
He acknowledged that the social media platform which is popular among the youth, is being used to advance criminal activities.
“With its wide reach, the TikTok platform has been used by criminal elements to spread malicious propaganda, steal popular accounts through identity theft and impersonation, defraud users through fake forex trade and job recruitment, distribution of sexual content and exposure of minors to inappropriate content,” read part of his statement.
Consequently, these have exposed minors to inappropriate content, caused distress to users whose identities have been impersonated among other negative effects.
Nevertheless, Kindiki noted that TikTok, among other social media applications like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Telegram have enhanced connections particularly for businesses.
To this effect, the Interior CS appeared to disagree with total ban of TikTok in Kenya, but on certain conditions.
He ordered owners of the platform to align with data protection regulations as provided for by the Office of Data Protection Commissioner.
“In particular, the office seeks to ascertain the level of compliance of TikTok with the Data Protection Act in order to understand what measures to ensure the privacy of individuals is respected in accordance with the laws.”
TikTok is therefore required to:
- Demonstrate compliance with the requirements of the Act, 2019 and other relevant local laws.
- Provide details on the effectiveness of age verification and content filtering if any.
- Implement additional Kenya specific supplemental terms in its privacy policy considering the provision of the Act.
- Upon demonstration of the compliance, register with the office as a data controller and/or data processor.
Ndolo appeared before the Parliamentary Public Petitions Committee in September last year, where he decried promotion of sexual content which was greatly affecting minors.
Prior to his appearance, President William Ruto held a meeting with TikTok Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Shou Zi Chew where they agreed on moderation mechanisms to reduce negative content on the video-sharing application.
So far, several countries, including India, EU, Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, New Zealand, UK, and Afghanistan, have banned TikTok.
The United States is also debating the matter, and recently issued a six-month ultimatum to TikTok owners Byte Dance from Beijing, China to sell its rights to the western nation or face a ban rom US app stores and web hosting platforms.
