TikTok working with Kenyan government to ban LGBTQ+ content in the country

The video-sharing app TikTok is in talks with the Kenyan government about removing LGBTQ+ content in order to follow Section 165 of the African country’s legal code, which bans consensual same-sex sexual relationships. These talks have occurred as Kenya is considering the passage of a bill that would punish gay sex with life in prison.

The app has already deactivated the accounts and demonetized the content of Kenyan users who share “inappropriate or restricted content.” TikTok has also committed to developing artificial intelligence tools to detect such content and deactivate the accounts behind them, as well as “a national training program to empower [Kenyan] users” to create and promote so-called positive content, The Los Angeles Blade reported.

Related:

TikTok secretly tracked which users viewed LGBTQ+ videos

Former employees said the data was loosely protected, risking it falling into the wrong hands.

These developments occurred after a man named Bob Ndolo issued a petition last month demanding that the country’s National Assembly ban TikTok for promoting violent, sexually “offensive,” and “vulgar” videos that pose a “serious threat to cultural and religious values of Kenya.”

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Ndolo’s petition reportedly upset national TikTok users who have monetized their videos. These users asked the government not to ban the app but to instead pass regulations preventing inappropriate content from being posted.

In response, President William Ruto and several senior government officials held a virtual meeting with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew on August 24 to discuss content regulation under Kenya’s laws. Chew agreed to remove inappropriate or offensive content “to fit community standards,” to develop an AI tool to detect and remove users who post such content, and to create a campaign to help users create and promote “positive” content.

Several government offices have been involved in these talks, including the Information, Communication, and Technology Ministry and the Kenya Film Classification Board (KFCB). Earlier this year, the KFCB signed an agreement with Netflix and worked with Showmax and two local video-on-demand platforms to remove all LGBTQ+-specific programming from them.

In August, Kenyan Member of Parliament Peter Kaluma introduced the “Family Protection Bill” based on Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act. Kaluma proposed the legislation after attending a March summit of anti-LGBTQ+ lawmakers in Uganda. The summit was organized by Family Watch International (FMI), an Arizona-based group committed to exporting anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion ideology to foreign countries. FMI was instrumental in crafting Uganda’s original 2009 “Kill the Gays” bill.

“Same-sex sexual acts and unions are sterile by nature,” Kaluma said, introducing the legislation. “If tolerated or supported and propagated, would lead to the extinction of the human race.” 

TikTok was launched by the Beijing-based company ByteDance in 2017. In 2019, TikTok told its moderators to limit the reach of LGBTQ+ & disabled people’s videos in a misguided attempt to reduce cyberbullying on the platform. That same year, it was revealed that TikTok had guidelines banning LGBTQ+ and other political content in Turkey even though homosexuality has never been illegal there.

At the time, The Guardian reported, “An entire section of the rules was devoted to censoring depictions of homosexuality. ‘Intimate activities (holding hands, touching, kissing) between homosexual lovers’ were censored, as were ‘reports of homosexual groups, including news, characters, music, tv show, pictures.’ Similarly blocked was content about ‘protecting rights of homosexuals (parade, slogan, etc.)’ and ‘promotion of homosexuality.’ In all those guidelines, TikTok went substantially further than required by law.”

TikTok’s current policies still allow “local moderators [to] subjectively censor content” which could include queer content. This year in Ethiopia, TikTok videos outing LGBTQ+ people and telling citizens to kill queer folks have proliferated. Many accused TikTok of not taking down posts calling for LGBTQ+ people to be whipped, stabbed, and killed. TikTok said it continues to remove videos that violate its community standards.

TikTok has previously fallen under scrutiny for suppressing freedom of expression, as outlined in a 2020 policy brief from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and the International Cyber Policy Centre.

According to the report, “LGBTQ+ TikTok users around the world have complained about censorship of their posts, including in the UK, the US and Turkey. Our research has found that hashtags related to LGBTQ+ issues in Russian, Arabic, Bosnian, and more aren’t searchable on the platform, preventing people who speak those languages all over the world from taking part in the discussion.”

TikTok spokespeople have confirmed that the platform removes LGBTQ+-specific content if a country’s law enforcement agencies request it for their country’s users.