National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetang’ula has received a motion in Parliament seeking to ban social media platform TikTok in Kenya.
The motion by Bridget Connect Consultancy CEO Bob Ndolo alleged that the platform has been promoting vices such as sexual immorality, hate speech and vulgar language.
According to the petitioner, the platform has been undermining social-cultural and religious values in Kenya.
“The petition decries that while it has gained popularity among the youths in Kenya, the content that is being shared on the platform is inappropriate thus promoting violence, explicit sexual content, hate speech, vulgar language, and offensive behaviour which is a serious threat to the cultural and religious views of Kenya,” Wetangula said.
According to Ndolo, if not banned, the Chinese platform will lead to moral decadence in the country, mental health issues and poor academic performance.
He cited cases where the platform has been fined for collecting minors’ data without their parents’ consent, which amounts to a breach of the law.
“TikTok has been implicated in several privacy scandals over the past years. For instance, in 2019, the app was fined $5.7 million by the USA Federal Trade Commission for illegally collecting personal information from children under the age of 13 by collecting data such as names, email addresses, and locations from young users without their parents consent thus violating Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act,” Ndolo stated.
Ndolo, who has termed the platform as addictive, has faulted the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) for failure to regulate TikTok.
Wetang’ula has referred the motion to the National Assembly’s Public Petitions Committee.
