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Writer's pictureIrungu Houghton

Disregarding code of practices will hurt social media platforms

Updated: Feb 7, 2023


Barely a week after President William Ruto launched Kenya’s first data protection registration system on International Data Privacy Day, January 27, 2023, the world’s most influential social media platform faces its most important test of accountability and legitimacy in a Kenyan court.


Organised by the three-year-old independent Office of the Data Protection Commissioner, this annual conference held the attention of very diverse stakeholders for two days. Fintechs, SMEs and multinational companies brushed shoulders with NGOs, professional associations, big data researchers and data privacy advocates and a wide range of government agencies.


The President’s speech powerfully articulated a clear vision for a digital transformed economy, citizens digital ID and a data protection regime that protects our privacy, builds global trust and confidence, and expands e-commerce within Kenya and with the rest of the world. His remark that Kenya has leap-frogged four decades of data governance legislation in Europe and North America with our Data Protection Act (2019) remains striking.


This coming week on February 6 and 8, Meta Inc and Facebook are before the Kenyan court on two very separate cases. The first case relates to the unsafe labour conditions of SamaSource company employees, several of them Kenyans, who moderate the content found on FaceBook. Meta have argued that the Constitution of Kenya cannot be applied to corporate entities operating outside Kenya’s territory. SamaSource employee and petitioner Daniel Motaung has argued that Meta generates revenue from Kenyans through advertising, processes our personal information and data, pays digital service tax to the Government of Kenya and is therefore, bound by the Data Protection Act.


The second case, explored in an earlier column, relates to the massive failure of Meta Inc. to protect Fisseha Tekle, the late Professor Meareg Amare and thousands of other Ethiopians from online hate speech during the recently ended two-year Tigray conflict. The two cases pivot on the argument that Meta Platform Inc is a foreign company carrying on business in Kenya and must comply with the laws of Kenya.


East Africans are not unfamiliar to foreign companies. Just a century ago, European imperial companies and governments seized 150 million people and 15 million square kilometres, a fifth of the world’s land mass, across Africa and Asia. In December 2022, FaceBook and WhatsApp had 5 billion users, thirty times twenty century imperialism. Imperialism or imperium, Latin for “to command”, is the extension into another territory without being accountable to local jurisdiction or people.


In this context, the resistance of social media platform owners to be held domestically accountable for the cost of doing business and the impact of their services is astonishing. It undermines the fundamental tenet of equality under the law in favour of foreign privilege. Why should local companies like NCBA bank be held accountable when Meta Inc is not? If the Kenya Kwanza administration can commit to bring 5,000 public services online and comply with the Data Protection Act in six months, why can’t the platforms? Finally, can we really claim to be a sovereign nation if Kenyan courts have no integrity, independence, and power to protect us?


There is a greater cost to social media platforms continuing to stick their webcams in the sand, to adapt that old ostrich analogy. Last week, the Council for Responsible Social Media released the Report on Disinformation and the Role of Big Tech in Kenya (2022). The report finds that 47 per cent of Kenyans have seen fake news on social media. FaceBook (90 per cent) and WhatsApp (36 per cent) offer the most fake content and 69 per cent no longer trust the information they see on FaceBook. Seventy per cent of Kenyans now want the social media platforms to self-regulate or be regulated by government.


The trust tide is drifting away from social media platforms that do not protect the privacy and dignity of users and the public. The time for investing in new ways of business and codes of practise is now.


This opinion was published in the weekly Saturday Standard column 4 February 2023 #StandardSettingKE


Two days after this column, the Labour and Employment Court made a very historic and globally significant ruling. Facebook’s parent company, Meta can be sued in Kenya. This subjects the company to its first substantial labor challenge outside of the US and Europe.


The 2022 Council for Responsible Social Media Report on Disinformation and the Role of Big Tech in Kenya can be found here . The dangers of corporate imperialism can be read here


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