July 18th 2022

Between March -May 2022, 16 qualitative focus group discussions were held across 4 counties in Kenya. It emerged from these discussions that Kenyans overwhelmingly want several actions:

• They want the government to act by putting reasonable restrictions on social media companies
• They want the platforms themselves to put forth guidelines for reducing harmful content
• They want educational campaigns to help people find and report mis/disinformation and fake news
• They see a role for themselves, the government, and the platforms in moderating the platform content 
• They believe there should be government intervention to ensure that social media companies adhere to their own rules (but not government overreach) 
• They want platforms to put reasonable restrictions in place of what people can and cannot post as well as well as have a better review process to review content before it is live
• They want social media companies to make rules to limit the type of posts that can be made, ban or suspend accounts that overwhelmingly post negative things, create rules for spreading false information and have a stronger review process before videos go live

Kenyans do not believe that the platforms are currently doing enough to protect consumers from harm, and they do not believe that the platforms alone will protect them without reasonable government intervention because intervention will cut into their profits. But they do not want government overreach.