Kenya's National Cohesion and Integration Commission threatens Facebook

NAIROBI: Kenya's National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) has warned Facebook to either stop hate speech on its platform within seven days or face ban, as the country goes to election next month.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said last week it has been preparing for the country's 2022 election over the past year with the help of a dedicated team that's working closely with election authorities and trusted partners in the country.

However, local advocacy group Global Witness and legal non-profit Foxglove have discovered that Facebook "appallingly failed to detect hate speech ads in the two official languages of the country: Swahili and English".

Reacting to their report, the country's ethnic cohesion watchdog NCIC said that Facebook is in violation of the laws of the country.

"They have allowed themselves to be a vector of hate speech and incitement, misinformation and disinformation," NCIC commissioner Danvas Makori said in a statement.

Global Witness and Foxglove said this follows a similar pattern they uncovered in Myanmar and Ethiopia, "but for the first time also raises serious questions about Facebook's content moderation capabilities in English".

"Facebook itself has praised its asuper-efficient AI models to detect hate speech' but our findings are a stark reminder of the risk of hate and incitement to violence on their platform," the groups said in their report. (IANS)

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