Twitter Deletes 240 Kenyan Influencers Accounts for Spreading Fake News on Women
Famous social media giant on Wednesday 23rd deleted over 240 Twitter accounts of Kenyan influencers over claims that they have been spreading fake information about women`s health and reproductive rights in the country.
Christine Juma 
According to a Mozilla Foundation investigation, a Spanish-based corporation recruited influencers to push hashtags into Twitter's trending section in Kenya in order to sway two reproductive health laws that were up for debate in 2019.
"The research reveals how a right-wing European organization used Twitter to insert disinformation and inflammatory rhetoric into an important and nuanced regional conversation," read part of the report.
Twitter explained that the first law, the Reproductive Healthcare Bill, attempted to eliminate forced sterilization and make pre-and post-natal carefree.
The Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill, on the other hand, aimed to establish surrogacy policies and standards.
In addition, the Mozilla Foundation stated that the funded tweets helped further the organization's cause by opposing the measures where influencers were paid between Ksh1138 and Ksh1707 each campaign to propagate the narrative.
More than 20,000 tweets were pushed in more than 240 accounts as a result of the operations, which have subsequently been banned for violating the platform's standards.
According to the report, multibillion-dollar corporations target countries like Kenya in order to disseminate their ideology.
“Such organizations see Kenya and other countries in the Global South as new frontiers to reinforce and spread their ideologies,” read part of the report.
