Africa’s major push to hold big tech firms accountable

As big tech firms dominate the African digital ecosystem, we are experiencing a rise of discriminative algorithms, market dominance abuse and exploitation of workers. FILE PHOTO | SHUTTERSTOCK   

By KENNEDY WANGARI More by this Author

As big tech firms dominate the African digital ecosystem, we are experiencing a rise of discriminative algorithms, market dominance abuse and exploitation of workers.

How do we regulate the big tech conduct on content moderation and protect online users’ personal data, privacy and autonomy?

In Europe, Google, Amazon and Meta have been heavily fined for allegedly violating anti-competition/antitrust laws.

In 2020, Meta was fined $52 million as compensation to more than 12,000 content moderators in the United States who had developed mental health issues while at work.

In Africa, Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya have already filed lawsuits against Meta and Tiktok, citing their inaction in curbing the spread of hate speech, violence and disinformation on their platforms and violating local regulations of where they operate.

From past experiences, we cannot trust big tech companies to abide by their own content moderation policies. Instead, we need governments and other actors to set guardrails to regulate their operations on the continent.

Recently, a Kenyan court ruled in favour of a former content moderator at Facebook who had filed a suit alleging to have been exposed to stressful working conditions around content moderation, low wages and unfair dismissal from work, after it found that the social media giant can be sued in Nairobi.

This court’s decision has set an important precedent for how Meta, Uber and its peers are held accountable for their labour practices around content moderation in Kenya.

Globally, we are experiencing a rise in the weaponisation of artificial intelligence across social media platforms.

Kenya’s general elections in the past have been held hostage by fake news machinery; Cambridge Analytica manipulated voters by intentionally spreading fake news via social media.

We need far more transparency, ethics, inclusion and public oversight about the algorithms developed by big tech to stop them from discriminating, keeping opportunities away from equally qualified women and minorities, or driving content to children that endanger their mental health and safety.

Wangari is a data scientist and developer advocate engineer. kennedykwangari@gmail.com