The Kenyan government’s requests to Google to take down content posted on the search engine’s platforms during the first half of last year dipped 79.3 percent to 12 compared to a similar period the previous year when the appeals had hit a record high to stand at 58.
Data from the tech giant's transparency report shows that the Kenyan government’s requests between January and June last year were chiefly driven by defamation and fraud concerns which accounted for three requests each. Other concerns included privacy and security as well as national security.
Last year, the majority of Kenya’s requests were for Google to remove items from appearing in the company’s blogging platform Blogger and on the firm’s video streaming platform YouTube, while others sought to have content erased from Google searches, Google maps as well as from Google Play Apps store.
According to the report, over half of the requests were initiated by the Judiciary through court orders directed at Google and others directed at third parties, while other complaints were lodged by the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) as one request was filed by unnamed government officials.
The tech giant however failed to take action on 29 percent of requests made by courts and on 25 percent of those made by the CA on account of what it termed ‘lack of enough information’. The request by the unnamed government official was also not acted upon on a similar basis.
“Courts and government agencies around the world regularly request that we remove information from Google products. We review these requests closely to determine if content should be removed because it violates a law or our product policies,” notes the US-headquartered tech firm.
“Some requests allege defamation, while others claim that content violates local laws prohibiting hate speech or adult content. The laws surrounding these issues vary by country/region.”
Our teams assign each request a category, such as hate speech, obscenity, and defamation.”
Google has remained the most popular search engine in Kenya, relied on by 98 percent of internet searchers in the country according to data from Irish web traffic analysis firm StatCounter.
