Platforms’ content moderation efforts fall short in Kenya

One of Kenya’s largest newspapers The Standard has cited ISD’s publication Under-Moderated, Unhinged and Ubiquitous: Al-Shabaab and the Islamic State Networks on Facebook  in their reporting on the country’s information landscape, including the potentially dangerous market dominance posed by large social media platforms.

Since the Kenyan presidential elections earlier this month, social media has been rife with mis- and disinformation, as well as hate speech, about political actors and the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission responsible for carrying out the country’s elections.

Alongside this, ISD research on the use of Facebook by terrorist groups to recruit members points to the way platforms are failing to protect non-European language audiences from hateful and extremist content.

“Although the platforms make millions in countries like Kenya, they do not invest in content moderation as much as they do in Europe or the Americas”, the article states.