By Peter Ochieng
Cabinet Secretary (CS) for Interior and National Administration Kithure Kindiki has expressed the government’s stand on the possible ban of popular social media platform, TikTok in the country.
Speaking on Thursday when he appeared before the National Assembly Committee on petitions to respond to a petition by Bob Ndolo, regarding the banning of TikTok in Kenya, the CS said TikTok, and other data controllers and processors must comply with regulations under the Data Protection Act.
He said it will be unfair to ban TikTok, before getting a word from managers of the platform, adding that the government has already reached out to them on the level of compliance, through the office of the data commissioner.
“The government, through the office of data protection commissioner, has contacted TikTok and sought to ascertain the level of compliance to ensure the privacy of individuals is respected, provide details on the effectiveness of age verification and content filtering, and demonstrate compliance with requirements of the Data Protection Act, 2019,” he said.
“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,” added Kindiki.
He said the country has a robust data management and control legal regime to facilitate a secure, effective and efficient adoption of technology, and digitisation of services in public and private sectors.
“The traditional way of communication across the world has been disrupted and social media platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Telegram, and Signal have been embraced by citizens as a medium of communicating, sharing information, planning events, promotion of brands and marketing tools for various products.”
Last year, Ndolo, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Bridget Connect Consultancy filed a petition, calling on Members of Parliament (MPs) to ban TikTok over claims of exposing young people to sexual content.
