Communications Authority of Kenya headquarters at Westlands. [Photo/techweez.com]The Communications Authority of Kenya Director General Francis Wangusi has said that the Authority is in talks with global social media networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to fight online hate speech, incitement and fake news.Wangusi says this will help in fighting online crime which has proved a hard but to crack.Governments world over are now concerned with this vice that is becoming hard to tackle especially in this age where information quickly goes viral as a result of increased internet adoption.The Kenyan presidential election in August and October this year was characterized by malicious fake news and propaganda, a phenomenon that has boiled to the global level."Since August, we have forwarded more than 300 online hate speech cases to the National Cohesion and Integration Commission and the Director of Criminal Investigations," Wangusi said on Thursday.However, Wangusi admitted that CA has been overwhelmed by the increasing cases. According to the latest statistics by the Authority, Kenya currently has 35.5 million internet users, an upsurge it says has been supported by affordable smartphones, cheap data from mobile service providers as well as the extensive laying of the fibre optic cable that has revamped internet access and speed.Wangusi revealed that an increase in cases of hate speech, character assassination, fake news, incitement and malicious propaganda prompted the Communications Authority to acquire a social media monitoring system tool at a cost of 600 million shillings, which is expected to help in the fight against the inappropriate use of social media and online platforms.

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