Corporate Responses to Hate Speech in the 2013 Kenya Presidential Elections - Case Study on Safaricom (or what we can learn from Kenya's leading mobile operator when it comes to balancing freedom of expression and hate speech)

I am reading articles on technology and public policy because one day I want to do a PhD on this stuff. To make sure I read the articles, I'm summarising what I remember here and filing it under 'professional stuff' in my labels. The parenthetical statements are usually mine while the rest is where I try to accurately represent what I took from the article.

Title: Corporate Responses to  Hate Speech in the 2013  Kenya Presidential Elections - Case Study on Safaricom

Authors: @LucyPurdon, @saliltripathi,& Margaret Wachenfeld of @ihrb, The Institute for Human Rights and Business.

*The Institute for Human Rights and Business describes itself as "provid[ing] a trusted space to deepen understanding of human rights challenges and the appropriate role of business."

Summary

This comprehensive 46 page report describes how both Safaricom and Facebook tried to mitigate "hate speech" during the 2013 elections using lessons learned from the disastrous (and violent) 2007 elections.

The report frames these efforts within evolving Kenyan law as well as international law and corporate social responsibility, pointing out the delicate balance that exists in many national and local contexts between "freedom of expression" and "hate speech".

Kenyan elections in 2007 

The 2007 Kenyan elections surprised everyone when the favourite Raila Odinga lost the presidency position at the last minute to another candidate, Mwai Kibaki. Odinga alleged fraud, and violence erupted across the country for several days. When the dust settled, 1 000 people were dead and 60 000 displaced.

Violence around the 2007 elections was in no small part spurred by discriminatory "hate speech", coming from citizens, media, and political candidates. The hate speech in some cases went so far as to actively encourage citizens of one particular tribe or ethnic group to kill or commit immediate violence against any neighbours coming from an opposing ethnic group.

One SMS (text) message exchanged during the election stated the following “We say no more innocent Kikuyu blood will be shed. We will slaughter them right here in the capital city. For justice, compile a list of Luos and Kalus(ph) [ethnic communities] you know at work or in your estates, or elsewhere in Nairobi, plus where and how their children go to school. We will give you numbers to text this information.”

Ethnic groups (called "tribes") in Kenya account for most of the 42 different languages spoken in the country. Political candidates at rallies around the 2007 election sometimes chose to speak their own language in order to exclude other Kenyans and/or to make uncomfortable suggestions or statements about other tribes.

Different Kenyan media outlets sometimes used expressions such as ‘settlers’, ‘let’s claim our land’, ‘people of the milk to cut grass’, ‘mongoose has come and stolen our chicken’, ‘madoadoa [spots]’ and ‘get rid of the weeds’ when referring to other tribes involved in the Kenyan elections.

On top of this, when the violence climaxed around the time the votes were being counted, the Government initiated a nation-wide information black-out, shutting down all major media and leaving an angry populace searching for up-to-date intelligence about what was happening. Social media stepped into the information breach, with Kenyan techs setting up and running Ushahidi, the open-source data collection project that lets users exchange crisis information via mobile. Ushahidi shared updates including the hot spots to avoid as riots continued to implode around the country.

Popular Kenyan bloggers posted political news regularly and pleaded in their comments sections for vitriolic users to please tone down any hate speech. The popular online bulletin board, Mashada, administrated by David Kobia, was so over-run with inflammatory and hateful comments that Mr. Kobia shut the board down and redirected users to a board called "I have no tribe...I am a Kenyan". (The original Mashada board was re-opened the following February.)

Government reaction after the 2007 violence included new legislation that let authorities level direct criminal charges against individuals. The International Criminal Court even indicted the current Kenyan President, Uhuru Kenyatta, and the current Deputy President, William Ruto, for crimes against humanity after subsequent electoral violence in 2009. However, with the 2013 elections approaching, it was clear more needed to be done to prevent rather than just prosecute the precipitating cause of much of the violence - "hate speech".

Kenyan Government reaction to 2007

In Kenya, a new Constitution created 47 new counties (inviting far wider elections for multiple new positions in the 2013 elections) and revised its view on freedom of expression in an effort to lessen future hate speech. The Government also created new laws: for example, the National Cohesion and Integration Act (NCIA), which allowed authorities to prosecute, among others, two Members of Parliament and an assistant minister for "hate speech".

The NCIA resulted in the creation of the National Cohesion and Integration Committee (NCIC), mandated to “facilitate and promote equality of opportunity, good relations, harmony and peaceful coexistence between persons of different ethnic and racial backgrounds in Kenya and to advice the government thereof.” The NCIC issued new guidelines for print and broadcast media, many of which also issued their own regulations for political advertising.

Other authoritative Kenyan reactions:

Eventually, in August 2012, the independent Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) issued draft Guidelines for the Prevention of Transmission of Undesirable Bulk Political Content via electronic Communications Networks - but this was after the leading mobile service provider of Kenya, Safaricom, had issued its own rules and regulations on distributing political content via SMS bulk messaging almost a month before.

Mobile telephony in Kenya

In 2007, Kenya had 12 million mobile phone subscriptions. Kenya, with a population of around 43 million, had, at the time of this 2013 report, around 29.8 million mobile phone subscriptions with expectations that this would climb to over 39 million by 2016.

Safaricom is the largest service provider for Kenyans with mobile phones, owning about 65% of the market. In 2008, Safaricom held its Initial Public Offer and the public acquired 25% ownership of the company leaving the Government stake in the company at 35%, with Vodafone maintaining its 40% shareholding. Safaricom is also the mastermind behind M-PESA, the mobile phone banking system that lets Kenyans use their mobile phones to carry out any and all financial transactions.

Out of all Safaricom mobile phone subscriptions, about 98% are pre-paid / pay-as-you-go plans. Owners of plans purchase scratchcards, scratch to find a unique code and text this code to receive a certain number of pre-paid minutes. When the violence erupted in 2007, many suppliers had trouble getting scratchcards delivered to shops. In the frenzy of citizens seeking information about the safety of loved ones, the scratchcards became a hot commodity with some unscrupulous shop owners inflating the prices of existing scratchcards and other shop owners simply running out of cards to sell to people.

Internet in Kenya

In 2007, Kenya had 3 million Internet users. In 2013, Kenya boasted 16.4 million Internet users, about 99% of which subscribe via a mobile device. Kenya also aims to become Africa's information and communication technology (ICT) "hub" by 2017, according to Kenya's National ICT Masterplan (published in 2012), complete with its own Silicon Valley outside Nairobi, the capital.

Safaricom is a part of this trend, issuing its own customised apps, lowering prices for accessing the Internet, and working with external web providers (e.g. Facebook) to bring Internet to more Kenyans.

In 2013, Facebook was the most popular social networking platform among Kenyans. Facebook Zero, a simple subscription that lets users access Facebook via free mobile Internet (thanks to Safaricom and Facebook) for a limited time, had successfully furthered the reach of this huge social network among many Kenyans.

What Safaricom did - and why - to prevent "hate speech" around the 2013 Kenyan elections

Safaricom realised that a lot of "hate speech" in 2007 was exchanged via mobile phone. While the company recognised that privacy concerns meant it could not interfere in peer-to-peer text messages, it did decide to regulate political "bulk messaging" in which Safaricom services were used.

"Bulk messaging" occurs when a candidate, party, organisation, or, more frequently, private companies, contract with a Content Service Provider (CSP) to send out a huge number of uniform text messages to users who have subscribed to a service or organisation and asked to receive such texts. (Kenyans are not supposed to receive any such messages from organisations to which they have not given explicit permission, according to the 2009 Kenyan Information and Communication Act.) The CSP then contracts with an ICT like Safaricom to deliver these messages. Bulk messaging can be a bit complicated when the bulk messages are purchased abroad and delivered via alphanumeric codes, which can obscure the original sender of a series of bulk messages.

Internally, Safaricom worked with CEO Bob Collymore and the Senior Public Policy Team to develop guidelines to mitigate hate speech sent via bulk SMS. Externally, Safaricom sought input from the NCIC, the CCK, the Electoral and Boundaries Commission, and the Registrar of Political Parties. Safaricom also reviewed the cases of individuals prosecuted for hate speech as well as media regulations and even international legislation surrounding hate speech. Throughout its outreach, Safaricom emphasised that its goals included avoiding liability for promoting hate speech as well as curbing any new violence around the 2013 elections.

The results were as follows:

***First Safaricom blocked all foreign alphanumeric codes and chose to work only with in-country CSPs. While this was a disputed action with regard to free and fair market competition, it solved the concern that external CSPs would provide hate speech bulk messages during the election period.

1. All applications for political bulk messaging were required to be made 48 hours in advance of when the messages were to be distributed - and no applications were allowed two days prior to the election.  
2. Applicants were required to identify the sender of any bulk messages with political content. Each CSP per bulk message application needed to provide: 
• verbatim content of the political message
• signed authorisation from the political party representative or individual sending the message
• certified copies of the political party registration documents or a copy of the applicant's national identification card
3. Political messaging had to be in either Kiswahili or English.
4. Safaricom vetted the content, reserving the right to refuse to send the message and sending any messages that did not fulfil the below criteria to the NCIC for review:
1. Political messages shall not contain offensive, abusive, obscene or profane language.
2. Political messages shall not contain inciting or discriminatory language that may or is intended to expose an individual or group of individuals to hatred, hostility or ridicule on the basis of ethnicity, tribe, race, colour, religion, gender, or otherwise. 
3. Political messages shall focus on Party manifestos and shall not dwell on unnecessary attacks on individual persons, their families, tribes or associations.
5. Safaricom Senior Management from Internet and Content and the Regulatory and Public Policy team had to sign off on all political bulk messages. 

As noted earlier, Safaricom finished these guidelines in June 2012, a month ahead of any official guidelines for mobile operators. There was criticism from civil society organisations about the lack of transparency in the creation of the guidelines - something the more official guidelines sought to remedy by submitting their guidelines for stakeholder feedback. Plus, civil society organisations accused Safaricom of going after "low-hanging fruit" by regulating political bulk messaging rather than all SMS chatter. Safaricom once again pointed out that it could not monitor peer-to-peer SMS exchanges without violating privacy. 

How successful were the guidelines?

Overall, between 1 June 2012 and 2 March 2013, Safaricom successfully vetted 62 of 68 requests (totalling 963,762 SMS messages) from 27 clients within 48 hours of each request. There were three requests that Safaricom blocked or referred to the NCIC: one request from a false Member of Parliament, one request in which a signature did not match the name on an national identification card, and one bulk message content referring to land rights, an incendiary issue in Kenya. (The message referring to land rights was eventually approved by the NCIC.) There was also one incident in which a CSP was hacked and a message attacking one individual was sent out to subscribers - this incident was referred to the judiciary authorities. 

In Kenya, voter turnout for the 2013 elections was 86%, the highest election turnout since the 1992 multi-party system was installed. Uchaguzi ("election" in Swahili), a project led by Ushahidi monitored reactions at the polling stations. Aside from one violent incident in Mombasa in which 17 people died, the elections were completed largely without incident. (Odinga lost again.)

And Facebook?

Not all hate speech happened via political bulk messaging, as many civil society organisations pointed out. However, Facebook did have an active team monitoring for any mention of the social network in relation to violence with the mandate to act quickly should Facebook be proven to be playing a pivotal role in relation to any violence. 

Facebook did receive a lot of criticism (as it often does) for its rather obscure reporting process. If someone finds something offensive on Facebook (and Facebook reports that it receives over 2 million global requests for content take-down every week), the offended individual is usually forced to report the offensive post to an automated system. Alternatively, if the statement is in a comment on a page, the offended individual can report it to the administrator of the page. However if, as is the case in discriminatory pages (e.g. Not Another Kikuyu President, Please), the administrator is an active part of the discrimination, this is not an ideal reporting process.

Facebook, after the 2013 Kenya elections, set up a new "social reporting" procedure which allows users to privately complain to a page administrator, thus fostering a one-to-one dialogue between offender and the individual offended. This can of course be escalated, but Facebook emphasises its role in preserving freedom of expression and promoting dialogue, not censorship.

Plus, the root cause for a lot of discrimination is not in what is said, but the many social, cultural, personal, familial, etc. factors that play a role in fostering a discriminatory population that then voices its intolerance via hate speech. As Frank LaRue, in his work as UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, points out, often the best action is preventative dialogue versus focusing on prosecuting offenders (treat the cause, not the symptoms).

In sum

The authors of the report point out the positive benefits of working with on-the-ground organisations that have contextual knowledge useful to multi-nationals like Facebook. However, the report also notes the dangers in allowing local government or elites to dictate what is hate speech and what is not - this can lead to outright censorship or simply a "chilling effect" on the freedom of expression. 

More next week...

The report goes into a very detailed description of existing international laws on freedom of expression and hate speech and the tensions therein. I'll cover that bit in the blog next week.