A protester wearing a #RejectFinanceBill2024 shirt holds the Kenyan flag during a demonstration in Nairobi. Photo by MC G’Zay, Pexels.

On June 8, 2025, microblogger Albert Ojwang died in police custody shortly after criticizing a senior police officer on X, formerly Twitter. His death helped trigger Kenya’s 2025 Gen Z protests by turning long-standing anger over government accountability into mass mobilization. As demonstrations spread, social media became both an organizing tool and a source of information for young Kenyans.

During the 2024 Finance Bill protests, hashtags such as #OccupyParliament and #RejectFinanceBill helped users share information, coordinate demonstrations, and draw wider attention to the movement. After Ojwang’s death in 2025, social media again became central as users documented police conduct, circulated protest updates, and demanded accountability. However, the same social media platforms that helped young Kenyans organize and share information also allowed authorities to monitor, intimidate, and suppress dissent through surveillance, online harassment, targeted arrests, and disappearances.

How Social Media Helped Organize Kenya’s Gen Z Protests

According to the Media Council of Kenya, the June 2024 protests were planned and carried out mainly through social media platforms such as X and TikTok, where users explained the Finance Bill, followed protest updates, and mobilized around the demonstrations. Instead of moving through party structures or formal opposition leaders, information spread through online conversations as young Kenyans debated the bill, criticized the government’s response, and urged others to join the demonstrations.

On X, formerly Twitter, Eric, the user behind the account @amerix, hosted “The Citizen’s Assembly,” an X Spaces forum where users discussed the Finance Bill and the government’s response to protesters. Held on July 7 and July 14, 2024, the forum drew about 60,000 listeners, according to the Media Council of Kenya. As the protests unfolded, X Spaces gave users a way to debate the bill, respond to arrests, and call for accountability in real time.

On TikTok, videos and livestreams gave users a direct view of the demonstrations as they unfolded, allowing many Kenyans to follow footage from the ground rather than relying only on official government statements. The footage captured scenes of confrontation and police misconduct, while its circulation helped preserve a record of events as they happened. After nationwide internet restrictions were reported during the June 2024 protests, users began sharing instructions for downloading and using VPNs so they could stay connected.

After Albert Ojwang died in police custody in June 2025, Kenyans again used social media to follow the protests as footage from the ground circulated online. Reuters reported that Ojwang had been arrested after allegedly defaming Deputy Inspector General Eliud Lagat online, and protesters later demanded Lagat’s resignation during demonstrations in Nairobi. During the June 17 protests, footage shared on X showed police striking Boniface Kariuki, a street vendor, before one officer shot him at close range. Kariuki later died from his injuries, according to his family.

Kenyan Authorities’ Social Media Surveillance and Crackdown

As young Kenyans used social media to organize and document the protests, their online activity also made them easier for authorities to identify, monitor, and intimidate. Amnesty International reported that Kenyan authorities deployed social media and digital tools to suppress Gen Z-led protests between June 2024 and July 2025, with young activists facing online threats, smear campaigns, surveillance, arrests, enforced disappearances, and killings.

During the 2024 Finance Bill protests, Amnesty documented cases such as Mariam, a Mombasa-based human rights defender whose name was changed for safety reasons, who received death threats online before police detained her for two nights. Another activist, identified as Joseph, said he received a direct message on X warning, “We are coming for you.”

Amnesty documented coordinated pro-government posting on X through John, a pseudonym for a young man who said he ran paid online campaigns for political and commercial clients, including government figures. He told Amnesty that his network used WhatsApp to organize about 20 people, with each person running several accounts to push pro-government messages to Kenyans on X. During large protests, the network created counter-campaigns in response to protest hashtags; for example, John said they answered #RutoMustGo with #RutoMustGoOn.

After Albert Ojwang’s death in police custody in 2025, coordinated posts again targeted protest messages online. Amnesty reported that posts under #endpolicebrutalityke were countered by accounts pushing the phrase “I Appreciate Police,” which reached Kenya’s top ten trends on X for several hours. On June 24, 2025, another campaign used #ChaosCartel to claim that Amnesty International was funding protest logistics, while a July 2025 AI-generated video circulated on TikTok and X with allegations of a conspiracy involving activists, civil society groups, international journalists, and Senator Okiya Omtatah.

Digital Blackouts and Broadcast Restrictions During the Protests

As the Finance Bill protests grew in June 2024, civil society groups warned the government against restricting internet access during demonstrations. On June 24, the Communications Authority of Kenya said it had no intention of shutting down the internet, but the next day Access Now, a digital rights organization, reported that internet connectivity had dropped nationwide by nearly 40 percent across at least 20 networks. ARTICLE 19, a free expression group, described the outage as a nationwide restriction on internet access during the protests.

Internet connectivity dropped during the June 25 demonstrations, and the cause of the outage remained unclear. The Internet Society, a nonprofit that studies internet infrastructure, later said the seven-hour disruption may have involved critical internet infrastructure, while ARTICLE 19 questioned why it happened during the peak of the protests. For protesters who depended on X, TikTok, livestreams, and messaging platforms to follow events, even a temporary internet outage made it harder to communicate, verify information, and document police conduct as demonstrations unfolded.

During the June 25 protests, the Communications Authority ordered television and radio stations to stop live broadcasts and warned that continued coverage could lead to regulatory action. Several broadcasters, including NTV, KTN, K24, and Kameme, were later taken off air. KTN said it continued broadcasting on YouTube, Facebook, and X, while a senior official at Nation Media Group, which owns NTV, told Reuters that NTV was live only on YouTube and its website. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights said the directive violated Article 34(2), which protects media freedom, and Article 35(1)(b), which protects access to information.

For young Kenyans who had used social media to organize, livestream demonstrations, and share footage of police misconduct, internet outages and broadcast restrictions made it harder to follow updates, verify what was happening, and watch live coverage as demonstrations unfolded. By interrupting internet access and threatening broadcasters, Kenyan authorities narrowed the channels young Kenyans used to document and participate in the demonstrations.

Missing Protesters and the Fear of Speaking Online

As videos of arrests and shootings spread online alongside reports of missing protesters, young Kenyans using social media to criticize the government had more reason to fear that speaking out could expose them to offline retaliation. Amnesty International estimated that excessive use of force by Kenyan security agencies during the 2024 and 2025 protests resulted in at least 128 deaths, 3,000 arbitrary arrests, and 83 forced disappearances, while also linking those abuses to arrests, disappearances, and killings carried out by police and other security agencies.

During and after the 2024 protests, families searched for missing relatives after people were allegedly abducted by security officers. The Guardian reported on August 15, 2024, that Emmanuel Kamau, a 24-year-old bus conductor from Kasarani, disappeared during the protests, leaving his family searching for answers.

Amnesty also documented how online harassment and smear campaigns helped suppress further mobilization and pushed some online protesters toward self-censorship.

Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes (Amendment) Act, 2025

On June 23, 2025, Joshua Okayo, the president of the Kenya School of Law Students Association, filed a petition seeking changes to Sections 22 and 23 of the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act. Section 22 criminalized false publication, while Section 23 criminalized the publication of false information. Okayo argued that those provisions had been used against Kenyans for online speech, including in cases linked to Rose Njeri and Albert Ojwang.

After President William Ruto signed the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes (Amendment) Act, 2025, into law on October 15, 2025, the government presented it as part of its effort to address cybercrime, defamation, and harmful online activity. Human Rights Watch warned that the amended law risked criminalizing legitimate online speech, while other critics argued that vague restrictions on false or misleading information could give authorities more room to target critics, activists, and protesters online.

For young Kenyans using social media to criticize the government, document police misconduct, or share protest-related information, the new law added a legal risk to online activism by making it easier for authorities to treat protest commentary as false publication, defamation, or misinformation.

Gen Z Turned to Social Media to Demand Accountability

Kenya’s Gen Z protesters used social media to turn public frustration into collective action at a time when many young people felt that formal political channels gave them few meaningful ways to demand answers from the government. Through X Spaces, TikTok livestreams, protest hashtags, and real-time updates from the ground, young Kenyans found ways to explain the Finance Bill, coordinate demonstrations, and challenge official accounts without relying on political parties or opposition leaders to organize the movement. Even after internet access was disrupted and broadcasters were threatened during the June 2024 Finance Bill protests, young Kenyans continued to rely on social media to share information and keep public attention on the demonstrations.

After Albert Ojwang’s death in 2025, pro-government online campaigns tried to discredit protesters and reshape how the demonstrations were seen online. But the protests continued, and young Kenyans kept sharing information about the demonstrations and documenting police misconduct.

Social media gave young Kenyans a way to organize and demand accountability, but it also made their protest activity easier for authorities to monitor and punish.

Author Bio: Efrata Eshetu is a third-year undergraduate student at Middlebury College, where she majors in International Politics and Economics and minors in Global Health. Her academic interests center on African migration, women’s rights, and the intersection of religion and policymaking across the continent.