A bill is on its way to parliament to bring some sanity in how group administrators in popular chat and social media app, WhatsApp and Facebook, respectively conduct their operations.
Named Kenya Information and Communication (Amendment) Bill 2019, the bill looks forward to containing online postings too, hence will require bloggers to register with the CA, as is the case with the aforementioned groups admins.
In essence, group administrators will need to submit their details to the CA, which include their location addresses and some information about their users.
And you ask, why is this bill here in the first place? Well, groups have been known to be notoriously shady, and have no boundaries when it comes to what members post.
According to the bill, some administrators have let unregulated messages stay online.
Should the bill make its way through parliament listens and be signed into law, then administrators will be tasked with a bigger responsibility, like deleting and kicking out group members who post scandalous materials and content.
The bill also wants to protect children, who should not be engaging in online activities that involve adults.
About the bloggers, the bill wants the space regulated because tens, or hundreds of blogs have sprung out of the blues, some posting wrong or unsubstantiated information. If culprits are registered, then the CA should be able to pinpoint them and ask them to adjust their content. Blogs that will be online without the CA’s nod will attract a KES 0.5M fine or a jail term of two years.
I have issues with the reporting in this article.
“`And you ask, why is this bill here in the first place? Well, groups have been known to be notoriously shady, and have no boundaries when it comes to what members post“` Is this according to the people who have drafted the bill or is this your own opinion. If it’s your opinion, you haven’t defended at all why you think think this will solve the problem. If it’s not your opinion, you could rephrase the wording to better reflect that.
“`About the bloggers, the bill wants the space regulated because tens, or hundreds of blogs have sprung out of the blues, some posting wrong or unsubstantiated information.“` What exactly is ‘wrong’ information? Who gets to decide that information is wrong and/or unsubstantiated? How does this affect the freedom of speech? Is it a problem for blogs to spring out of the blue?
I’m sorry, but I feel like this is very lazy journalism. It’s very politically correct and the author hasn’t gone any extra mile to discuss what could be wrong and/or illegal in this bill. The author doesn’t make it a point to inform the public of any rights that might be affected by this. If the law applies only to Kenyan bloggers yet most blogs Kenyans read are not necessarily by Kenyan bloggers, the author could discuss some potential effects. I’m tired of lazy journalism, and I’m sorry for this long rant, but please, you can do better than this.
Comments are closed.