A short video company App TikTok, will set base in Kenya. this was revealed, In a virtual meeting on, Thursday 24th August 2023, when President William Ruto alongside Trade CS Moses Kuria, held a Zoom meeting with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew over monetization and moderation of content on its platform.
This comes hours after the President announced to the country that he will be having the meeting to come up with a mechanism to moderate content on their space so as to reduce content that is negative and leverage monetization benefitting Kenyans.
In a statement released by State House Tiktok’s CEO committed to ensuring that content is moderated to fit community standards which will mean that all inappropriate content or offensive content will be expunged from the platform.
The move, President Ruto said, will ensure that content on the platform adheres to agreed guidelines.
Mr. Chew also agreed to set up a Kenyan Office to coordinate its operations in the continent.
He also pledged to hire more Kenyans to work for the platform.
The meeting comes when pressure continues to intensify for the government to ban the app in Kenya. In a petition by a lawmaker Bob Ndolo, to the parliament, he cited that the platform promotes explicit content and materials that glorify violence as the main reason for the ban. The national assembly speaker Moses Wetangula confirmed to had received the petition.
This in turn caused a lot of debate among legislators having different opinions and views, as some wanted the platform to be banned while others wanted the content to be moderated.
TikTok has received a lot of criticism from all over the world. Recently Somalia has banned the platform terming it a threat to national security as it was used to spread violence. Even beyond the continent, 34 out of 50 states have banned the use of TikTok on government devices and the state of Montana has banned the app on all personal devices with effect January 1, 2024.
The country will stand to benefit if the TikTok CEO stays true to his word and if what the president says is anything to go by, it will offer a lot of opportunities for content creators to be able to monetize their content and also offer jobs to youths.