Amnesty International has revealed that Kenyan authorities financed a network of trolls to threaten and intimidate young Gen Z protesters, employing digital tactics to suppress anti-government demonstrations. The human rights organization documented a coordinated campaign that included online harassment, disinformation, and surveillance aimed at stifling dissent.
The report, titled ‘This fear, everyone is feeling it’: Tech-facilitated violence against young activists in Kenya, details how government agencies and allied groups weaponized social media platforms to target protesters. Between June 2024 and July 2025, young Kenyans led demonstrations in 44 counties, including Nairobi and Mombasa, opposing proposed tax increases on essential goods, rising femicide rates, and systemic corruption. Social media was crucial for organizing these protests, but authorities responded with intimidation tactics.
Amnesty’s research, based on interviews with 31 human rights defenders, found that nine activists received violent threats via direct and public messages on X, TikTok, Facebook, and WhatsApp. One activist, Mariam, recounted, ‘I had people coming into my inbox and telling me, “You will die and leave your kids. We will come and attack you.”‘ She had to change her child’s school after trolls sent her the child’s name, age, and school bus details, demonstrating the severe personal risks.
The troll networks were reportedly paid between 25,000 and 50,000 Kenyan shillings (approximately $190-$390) per day to promote government narratives and manipulate social media trends. For instance, during peak protests, they created counter-hashtags like #RutoMustGoOn to overshadow popular protest hashtags such as #RutoMustGo. Young women and LGBT+ activists faced disproportionate abuse, including misogynistic comments, body shaming, doxxing, and AI-generated pornographic images designed to shame and silence them.
Coordinated online attacks included the #ToxicActivists campaign in April 2025, which targeted prominent journalist Hanifa Adan with Islamophobic imagery after she participated in a BBC documentary. These campaigns illustrate how state-supported trolling spreads false narratives, such as claiming that enforced disappearance survivors staged their own abductions, further vilifying critics.
Beyond digital abuse, the authorities were accused of unlawful surveillance, with allegations that telecom provider Safaricom allowed police to track activists’ locations, leading to enforced disappearances. Amnesty estimates that security forces killed at least 128 people, arrested over 3,000, and caused 83 enforced disappearances during the crackdowns, highlighting the lethal physical repression that complemented online tactics.
In response to the report, Kenya’s Interior Minister Kipchumba Murkomen stated that the government ‘does not sanction harassment or violence against any citizen’ and that any officer involved in unlawful conduct would be investigated. However, Amnesty emphasized that these denials contradict evidence of state-coordinated campaigns and called for independent investigations into the abuses.
The findings reveal a troubling escalation in the use of technology to suppress civil liberties, with implications for democracy and human rights in Kenya and beyond. Amnesty has urged Kenyan authorities to cease tech-facilitated violence, compensate victims, and uphold constitutional freedoms, while also pressing social media companies to better enforce policies against organized threatening campaigns.
