In an era where fake news and digitally altered content spread within seconds, Ghana’s Cyber Security Authority (CSA) says it has ramped up efforts to combat misinformation, disinformation, and AI-generated deepfakes across social media.
At a joint press briefing on August 4, 2025, between the Cyber Security Authority and the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service, concerns were raised about the growing number of fake accounts being used to deliberately mislead the public.
A popular social media influencer, Joshua Buernortey Boye-Doe, known as KalyJay on X, asked about the plans of the institution to monitor pages intentionally spreading falsehoods and the increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to manipulate images and videos.
Social media monitoring team now in place
Responding to the concerns, the Director-General of the CSA, Divine Selassie Agbeti, revealed that the Ministry of Communication, Digital Technology, and Innovations has directed the Authority to establish a dedicated social media monitoring team, a unit that is now fully operational.
He explained, however, that taking down misleading or harmful accounts is not always straightforward. The CSA boss pointed out that because Ghana does not own or directly regulate platforms like Facebook and TikTok, it must rely on those companies to act, often after extensive justification.
“We have taken down multiple accounts, but the problem is these platforms, Facebook, TikTok, we don’t own them in Ghana, the owners are not Ghanaians, and they’re not in Ghana. So, for us to take these down, we have to give a lot of justifications to the platform owners, and the platform owners actually carry out their own investigations before they decide,” he explained.
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On the rise of deepfakes and AI-manipulated content
The CSA also acknowledged the growing threat posed by AI-altered content, commonly known as deepfakes, used to deceive the public.
“We have been doing a lot of work in this area. We’ve taken down multiple accounts, but sometimes you take one down and a new one pops up the next morning,” he said, citing the escalation of cryptocurrency scam accounts as a major concern.
According to the CSA, efforts to curb this type of disinformation go beyond simple takedowns.
“We are working hard and we are going to take this further to maybe see how the government can engage platform owners directly,” he said.
Adding that the Minister for Communications is also leading efforts to ensure the online ecosystem is protected from such emerging threats.
By Nusrat Essah
