President William Ruto on Wednesday announced that he is set to hold a meeting with global TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew on Thursday, August 24 amid concerns over harmful and explicit content on the platform that has been deemed inappropriate for Kenyan audiences, especially children.
Speaking in Nakuru during the Kenya Music Festival Winner's State Concert, the Head of State said he will discuss strategies with the executive that will enable the tech firm to moderate content on the platform to make it more palatable.
"Tomorrow morning, I will be speaking to the global CEO of TikTok so that we can agree on a mechanism to moderate content on their space so that we can reduce the content that is negative and leverage the monetization that is benefitting a lot more people," the Head of State said.
This comes even as a Kenyan submitted a petition to Parliament to ban the platform, citing its promotion of explicit content and material that glorifies violence.
After the petition was filed, a fierce debate ensued among legislators, with opinions divided between an outright ban and the implementation of more rigorous content moderation.
At the same time, the Head of State revealed that the meeting will also address monetization to allow Kenyan content creators to earn from their talent.
The Head of State also revealed that he had agreed with other global social media giants such as YouTube and X to monetize Kenyan content for Kenyan creatives.
"Over the past year, I have discussed with the owners of social media platforms, from Facebook to X to TikTok including YouTube and we have progressed our conversation and I am happy to say that two of them have already agreed to monetize content in Kenya," Ruto stated.
"YouTube, for example, we are now at 80% monetization. We are one of the four countries in the African continent that we can now monetize our content on YouTube," he added
Ruto also revealed he met with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in 2022, and the two agreed to select 25 content creators to monetize their content on the platform.
"These platforms bring between Ksh300 million and Ksh500 million every month, so we are increasing the revenues as a country from this space," he stated.
Ruto emphasised that it was necessary to have the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) post its content on social media platforms especially content from music events and drama festivals.
This he remarked, will generate revenue, enable children to earn from their talent, and enable relevant institutions to organize more and better events.
