Kenya’s Threat to Ban Facebook Could Backfire

In June, Global Witness and Foxglove found that Meta continued to approve ads in Amharic targeting Ethiopian users that included hate speech and calls for violence. Facebook has been implicated in spreading hate speech and stoking ethnic violence in Ethiopia’s ongoing conflict.

Crider argues that Facebook needs to invest more in its moderation practices and protections for democracy. She worries that even the threat of a ban allows the company to deflect accountability for the problems it has left unaddressed.

“I think ultimately the moment that any regulator looks at Facebook and looks as if they’re going to make them actually do something that might cost them some money, they start howling about censorship and present false choice that it’s either an essentially unmoderated and unregulated Facebook or no Facebook at all,” she says.

And Crider says there are things the company can do, including “break the glass” measures like deprioritizing its heavily promoted live videos or limiting the reach of inflammatory content, and banning election-related ads in the run up to the vote.

Mercy Ndegwa, Meta’s Director of Public Policy East and Horn of Africa, told WIRED that the company has “taken extensive steps to help us catch hate speech and inflammatory content in Kenya, and we’re intensifying these efforts ahead of the election.” She acknowledged, however, that “despite these efforts, we know that there will be examples of things we miss or we take down in error, as both machines and people make mistakes.” Meta did not answer specific questions about the number of content moderators it has who speak Swahili or other Kenyan languages, or the nature of its conversations with the Kenyan government.

“What the researchers did was stress test Facebook’s systems and proved what the company was saying was hogwash,” says Madung. The fact that Meta allowed ads on the platform despite a review process “raises questions about their ability to handle other forms of hate speech,” says Madung, including the vast amount of user generated content that does not require pre-approval.

But banning Meta’s platforms, says Madung, will not get rid of disinformation or ethnic tensions, because it does not address the root cause. “This is not a mutually exclusive question,” he says. “We need to find a middle ground between heavy-handed approaches and real platform accountability.”

On Saturday, Joseph Mucheru, cabinet secretary for internet and communications technologies (ICT), tweeted, “Media, including social media, will continue to enjoy PRESS FREEDOM in Kenya. Not clear what legal framework NCIC plans to use to suspend Facebook. Govt is on record. We are NOT shutting down the Internet.” There’s currently no legal framework that would allow NCIC to order Facebook’s suspension, concurs Bridget Andere, Africa policy analyst at digital rights nonprofit Access Now.

“Platforms like Meta have failed completely in their handling of misinformation, disinformation, and hate speech in Tigray and Myanmar,” said Andere. “The danger is that governments will use that as an excuse for internet shutdowns and app blocking, when it should instead spur companies toward greater investment in human content moderation, and doing so in an ethical and human rights-respecting manner.”

Madung, likewise, worries that regardless of whether the government chooses to suspend Facebook and Instagram now, the damage may already be done. “The effects will be seen at a different time,” he says. “The issue is the precedent is now officially out there, and it could be referred to at any point in time.”