A section of Senators have initiated a debate seeking to have influential video platform TikTok regulated in Kenya.
According to the Senators led by Nominated Senator Iman Falhada Dekow, they want the application regulated in order to secure user’s data.
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The Senator also argued that TikTok goes against the community policy adding that it is likely to promote explicit content, violence and hate speech.
“Mr Speaker, there have been various issues on the application on data privacy. The application gathers the information on the user’s country location, internet address an type of device. It also ascertains user’s exact location and phone’s contacts,” she said.
Dekow asked all senators and the committee working on the information technology to work with the Government egencjes and come up with a method to regulate the app.
She was seconded by Nandi senator Samson Cherargei who said that the platform was popular with the young people but the internet at large which includes older people.
On his side, Nominated senator Isaac Mwaura said that the regulation should apply on all applications.
“The same should apply to Facebook and Twitter. It is important to check how the user’s data is being used,” he said.
According to Wikipedia, TikTok also known as Douyin in China, is a Chinese video-sharing social networking service founded in 2012.
The app is used to create short music, lip-sync, dance, comedy and talent videos of 3 to 15 seconds, and short looping videos of 3 to 60 seconds.
TikTok was launched for the Chinese market in September 2016 but later in 2017, was launched for iOS and Android markets outside China
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However, it only became available worldwide, including the United States, after merging with another Chinese social media service Musical.ly on 2 August 2018.
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