The debate around social media regulation in Kenya and indeed globally, is dominated by concerns about national security and social order. Beyond the dichotomy of absolute government control or unchecked digital chaos lies an invisible middle approach which soberly balances security and freedoms. A balanced approach protects both the legitimacy of social media governance and the fragility of any democracy, proving more sustainable than a strictly regulatory approach, which might lose public support and create new problems.
Accordingly, decision-makers in Kenya should not succumb to fear-driven calls for strict regulation and perhaps censorship of social media. Social media intelligence, content moderation, and fact-checking are three critical pillars upon which Kenya can anchor its model of social media governance. Here is how:
Social Media Intelligence
Social media intelligence which is the process of gathering, analysing, and interpreting data from social media platforms to gain actionable insights, is a preferable option for the Government of Kenya. By deploying algorithmically programmed digital tools on social media, the government will be able to identify the major issues of national concern, analyse the sentiment (negative or positive), and establish trends and patterns across various groups in the society. This helps to better interpret public opinion and calibrate real and imagined online security threats, for proactive response.
In terms of security, social media intelligence provides critical data and information, from which patterns can be drawn to predict destabilising events, behaviours, and threats. The United States government is currently screening social media to process visa and immigration applications. In the June 17th 2025 protests in Kenya, when a police officer, Klinzy Barasa, was caught on video shooting an unarmed protester, Boniface Kariuki, the public screened social media and identified his name and service number within hours of the shooting. This significantly helped the public quest for justice and accountability from the Kenyan police; the police officer was arrested on the same day and is currently on trial.
Digitally driven threats and challenges are not unique to governments. When corporate firms were faced with chaotic markets because of the digitisation of the global consumer markets, they adopted social media intelligence with the use of algorithms. Companies were thus able to interpret consumer patterns and preferences across products, races, ethnicities, religions and regions, and to effectively adapt their strategies. The corporate world survived the chaos of digitization and improved their operations, market reach, customer relations, and market performance globally.
With more resources at their disposal, governments should similarly develop digital tools to effectively monitor social media to ensure responsiveness in addressing public concerns and managing national security. Kenya should thus dedicate financial, technical, and technological resources to adapt the country’s political and security environments to the workings of social media and digital technologies.
Content Moderation
Another proactive and sustainable solution to harmful content on social media lies in robust, platform-led content moderation. Online platforms, as digital communities, already employ sophisticated, multi-layered, and far more agile approaches. They utilise algorithms to proactively identify and flag egregious content that violates child safety and promotes graphic violence, hate speech, and terrorism, often before it reaches users.
Dedicated human moderators can also provide the nuanced judgement required for complex cases, distinguishing between genuine threats and satire, or historical images and hate propaganda.
The challenge for Kenya is not how to control social media but to protect its open architecture, because in regulation lies the temptation for censorship. Relevant authorities should explore mechanisms that do not limit free speech but focus on moderating high-impact content, which directly threatens social order and national security. A legislated framework to anchor content moderation for Kenya’s digital ecosystem, which apportions primary responsibility to social media companies, is the necessary next step.
The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) mandates a tiered system of obligations for online platforms. All platforms must establish transparent notice-and-action mechanisms for illegal content. However, “Very Large Online Platforms” (VLOPs)—those with over 45 million users in the EU—face more stringent duties, including conducting risk assessments on the societal impact of their services and implementing measures to mitigate harms such as disinformation. This approach compels platforms to internalize the costs of content governance. Germany’s Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) requires social media networks with more than two million registered users in Germany to remove “manifestly illegal” content, such as hate speech, within 24 hours of notification or be penalized.
A key lesson from these frameworks is the emphasis on robust enforcement mechanisms to ensure compliance from social media companies. The European Commission penalizes social media companies for breaches either through fines of up to 6 percent of their total annual global turn-over, or 5 percent of the company’s average daily global turnover for each day a company continues to be in breach of its obligations. Adopting a similar co-regulatory approach and incentives for social media companies to continually refine their internal governance systems will help Kenya to achieve its security goals without sacrificing freedoms and democracy.
Enhancing Fact-checking Mechanisms
Enhancing fact-checking and verification mechanisms offers a more effective and democratic approach to curbing online circulation of harmful content and addressing disinformation, misinformation, and mal-information. This is because in the context of public tensions driven by dissent, social media regulation has the possibility to introduce censorship and roll back the democratic gains achieved through online activism.
To this end, the Kenyan government should consider establishing a dedicated fact-checking agency or unit, especially within the Office of the Government Spokesperson, with the main objective of identifying and countering false and misleading narratives with evidence-based clarifications.
Furthermore, the government fact-checking agency or unit can support and collaborate with independent fact-checking organisations to enhance the truth and credibility of its outputs. The Service de vigilance et de protection contre les ingérences numériques étrangères (VIGINUM), could serve as a good model to emulate for Kenya, albeit at a domestic level. Conversely, it might require training of government communication personnel to mainstream fact-checking.
In the wake of perceived heightened disinformation, misinformation, and mal-information threats posed by adversaries , the French government established a state agency in 2021 with the mandate of ensuring vigilance and protecting the state from digital foreign interference. One of the most notable achievements of the agency was the flagging down of 355 fake news websites that mimicked legitimate French and European media outlets (e.g., Le Monde, Le Parisien, The Guardian) in 2023. The fake websites were allegedly being used by hostile foreign forces to promote propaganda narratives within the European Union. As observed, the establishment of a fact-checking body in Kenya is a proven and effective approach which could go a long way in safeguarding public discourse.
Conclusion
As legitimate as the call for regulation of social media in Kenya is, there is need to recognize that social media is the largest technological enabler of the right to access information, the freedom of speech, and political participation. Social media is also the largest open data source on civic engagement and sentiment, which can be harnessed using social media intelligence for proactive decision-making. Excessive regulation, while it may be tempting and even justified in some cases in safeguarding critical aspects of national interest, it can also threaten rights and freedoms online and subsequently shrink the digital civic space as well as its data pool. A balanced approach towards social media governance sustainably transforms social media to complement government security and stability efforts as through social media intelligence, fact-checking and content moderation.
The Authors are Researchers at The HORN Institute.
