New online safety Bill sets Sh500m fines for digital platform offenders

Providers of regulated online services risk paying a fine of Sh500 million or 10 per cent of their annual global turnover for failing to comply with proposed online safety laws.

A new bill before Parliament, the Online Safety Bill 2026 sponsored by Embakasi West MP Mark Mwenje, has proposed stiff penalties as part of establishing a legal framework for online safety to protect children.

The Bill provides for corporate liability, penalties and civil penalties, which affect turnover-based penalties and business disruption orders as deterrent sanctions, while parents and guardians will be required to take reasonable steps to protect children from online harm.

It seeks to protect children from exposure to pornographic material and to create a duty of care for the safety of children from user-to-user internet platforms, social media intermediaries and search services in Kenya.

The bill gives effect to the request to create a systemic regulatory regime for user-to-user internet platforms, social media intermediaries and search services in Kenya.

“The Bill imposes duties of care on providers of user-to-user services and search services. The duties require providers to assess and mitigate risks that users, particularly children, encounter illegal or harmful content online,” the bill proposes.

“A provider of a regulated service who fails to comply with a duty of care imposed under this Act commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding Sh500 million or 10 per cent of the provider's annual global turnover, whichever is the higher,” it also states.

Where an offence is committed with the consent or connivance of, or is attributable to any gross negligence on the part of, a senior executive officer of the provider, that officer commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding Sh10 million or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years, or to both.

The Bill also empowersthe  Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) to monitor and enforce compliance.

Where the Authority has reasonable grounds to believe that a provider of a regulated service has failed to comply with a duty imposed, it may impose a civil penalty on the provider.

In determining the amount of a civil penalty, the Authority will be expected to ensure the penalty is proportionate to the nature and circumstances of the failure, but it must notify the provider of the proposed penalty and allow them to be heard before imposing a civil penalty.

Similarly, the serving Information, Communication and Digital Economy Cabinet Secretary may, by regulations, prescribe different maximum penalties for different categories of regulated services or different types of failure.

The Bill treats child sexual abuse material as illegal content and contains provisions that create statutory obligations on providers and give the Authority a basis to enforce standards for detection and expedited removal.

It requires age assurance for content that is harmful to children and contains provisions on standards, procedures and safeguards for age verification and age estimation, including protection of personal data and privacy of users.

“A parent or any person who exercises parental responsibility under the Children Act shall take reasonable steps to protect a child under their care from harm online.  In the discharge of the responsibility, a parent or any person who exercises parental responsibility shall guide the child on the safe and responsible use of internet services, including the risks of interacting with strangers and sharing personal information,” the bill proposes.

The parent or guardian will be expected to provide guidance and supervision over the child's use of internet services appropriate to the age and maturity of the child and, where the child is exposed to online abuse or exploitation, take appropriate action, including reporting the matter to the provider of the service, the Authority, the National Council for Children Services or the National Police Service.

Under the Bill, providers will be required to assess and address risks from algorithms and features that affect children and contain provisions that require providers to identify harmful algorithmic feeds and addictive features and to take proportionate design and operation measures.

It seeks to address predatory contact and harassment through risk assessment, parental responsibility and reporting and complaints systems and contains provisions that provide accessible reporting and redress pathways for predatory contact, online grooming and peer cyberbullying.

The Bill also states that a provider of a regulated service or a search service that is likely to be accessed by children shall establish and operate systems and procedures that enable a user or an affected person to readily report, in the case of a regulated service, content available on the service that the user or affected person considers harmful to children; or, in the case of a search service, search content that the user or affected person considers harmful to children.

Similarly, a provider of a search service that is likely to be accessed by children shall establish and maintain a complaints procedure that allows for relevant kinds of complaints to be made, provides for appropriate action to be taken by the provider of the service in response to complaints of a relevant kind, and is easy to access, easy to use by children and transparent.

Last week, South Mugirango MP Sylvanus Osoro led the House in stating the need to review cyber laws, also extending to adults’ responsible use of social media, saying that, on cyberbullying, Kenyans need to learn better how to conduct themselves responsibly.

“It is about time this House considers putting in place measures to address the misuse of social media, particularly by individuals who spread false information and create unnecessary alarm,” Osoro said.

Whip of the Minority Party, Millie Odhiambo, insisted on the need for responsible social media use, saying it has a lot of impact, even on the young people using it.

“Sometimes, you look at a person engaging you and they look like they aged about 14 or 15 or thereabouts. Other than parents failing to take care of their own children, sometimes they may not be able to because they are not conversant with social media; I think as a House we must see how to deal with this issue,” Odhiambo said.

“I’m especially concerned (I will not give names, as a child rights lawyer) about a young girl who lost her mother, is always on social media and I think we need to call on the Children department to look into her case. She may not notice now, but things people are talking about are not good for personal development,” she added.

Odhiambo proposed that it is up to the House to determine at what point young people should be able to engage in social media, and she admitted that it may not be a popular thing because young people do not like regulation of social media but should be done.

“We need to look at the evolving capacities of children. Even when matters of children are decided in court, it looks at the evolving capacity of a child, not what a child thinks they want,” she insisted.

Deputy Speaker Gladys Boss challenged the committees on Communication and the Committee on Delegated Legislation respectively to sit together and come up with regulations to ensure that the spread of fake news on social media stops.

“As much as social media is beneficial to us, if left unregulated, it can cause more harm than good to society. Some people do not care about the consequences of their actions, as long as they are trending. That must stop,” Boss uttered.

The MPs admitted that the government or even Parliament might never be able to oversee everything that happens on social media, and Kenyans are urged to act responsibly in their use of the gadgets they carry, insisting it is time to restore order and regulations.

igithinji@standardmedia.co.ke