Kenya's ethnic cohesion watchdog has given Meta's Facebook seven days to tackle hate speech and incitement on the platform relating to next month's election, failing which its operations will be suspended.
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East Africa's biggest economy is in the throes of campaigning ahead of presidential, legislative and local authorities elections on Aug. 9.
Advocacy group Global Witness said in a report published on Thursday that Facebook had accepted and carried more than a dozen political advertisements that breached Kenya's rules.
Kenya's National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) said the report corroborates its own internal findings.
"Facebook is in violation of the laws of our country. They have allowed themselves to be a vector of hate speech and incitement, misinformation and disinformation," Danvas Makori, an NCIC commissioner said on Friday.
Meta has taken "extensive steps" to weed out hate speech and inflammatory content, and it is intensifying those efforts ahead of the election, a company spokesperson told Reuters.
"We have dedicated teams of Swahili speakers and proactive detection technology to help us remove harmful content quickly and at scale," the spokesperson said.
