TikTok Ban Petitioner Bob Ndolo will tommorow appear before the Parliament Public Petition Committee to substantiate push for the ban of the global app.
The Bridge Connect Consultancy Executive Director presentation will guide the report that will be table before the house on the agitation for the global ban app.
This comes weeks after TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew committed to play part in a joint working team with Kenyan authorities to moderate content on its platform.
Shou made the commitment on Thursday when he held talks with President William Ruto.
He has also committed to have TikTok set up an office in Nairobi to coordinate its operations in the region.
The CEO also pledged to hire more Kenyans to work for the platform, pointing out that Kenya was among the most active countries on the platform, State House officials said.
Speaker of the National Assembly Moses Wetangula says the petition by Ndolo, cites explicit content and lack of privacy among others.
“The content that is being shared on the platform is inappropriate thus promoting violence, explicit sexual content, hate speech, vulgar language, offensive behavior which is a serious threat to the cultural and religious values of Kenya,” Wetangula said, quoting the petition.
The petitioner, Wetangula said, avers that in Kenya, the internet application is not regulated by the Communications Authority of Kenya leading to the failure to remove or block content that is offensive.
The Chinese-based social media app that is popular among the GenZ’s has faced challenges, particularly in the US where it is accused of being a surveillance tool.
Montana Governor Greg Gianforte of USA was the first to sign a legislation to ban the short video social media app from operating in the state to “protect Montanans” from the alleged surveillance.
In Kenya, the petitioner claims that the social media app collects data from people and shares it with third parties without their consent thus violating their rights.
“The platform has shared information about its users with the third party company without users’ consent,” the petitioner states in what has rattled social media users.
TikTok snowballed to become the most popular app in 2019 and 2020 when it recorded close to 700 million downloads and has remained on an increasing trajectory since.
Source: Irene Mwangi
