Kenya’s National Assembly Considers Petition to Ban TikTok

On the issue of social decency, a petitioner has alerted members of the Kenyan parliament to rectify issues with TikTok. On Tuesday, Bob Ndolo, the Executive Officer of Bridget Connect Consultancy submitted a petition to the National Assembly seeking that they implement measures against the explicit content delivered by the platform to its citizens.

Ndolo in his petition asked Members of Parliament (MPs) to place a ban on the use of TikTok within the country. His reason remains that the platform exposes youths to explicit sexual content, which he also said was reducing the morality of social, cultural, and traditional values.

In response to the petition, Majority Leader Kimani Ichung'wa said that the Parliament won't make such a decision because it has created a lot of jobs for young people. Also, he said that while the petition from Bob Ndolo has good reasons, implementation of such will be a fight against technology.

“The petitioner should come to seek on how to regulate the usage of the app, age group and content uploaded for a certain age to watch, outright banning would be killing careers of many young people who are earning a living through it,” Mr Ichung’wa said.

Irene Mayaka who is also a member of the parliament said that such an implementation will be futile considering the special use of Virtual Private Networks (VPN) which will still allow Kenyans to access the app and this will cause the breach of personal data which will have adverse effect later on. 

Irene also urged parents to put a close watch on their children and what they do on social media.

However, the petition will be considered by the Public Petitions Committee which will give a judgment after 60 days.