OPINION: Internet challenges are not all fun and games

Right at that moment, when I was just about to upload my photo and succumb to peer pressure by joining an internet challenge to “Go to ChatGPT and use this prompt: Create a Caricature of me and my job based on everything you know about me”, I hesitated.

My childish paranoia of the famed SkyNet AI that powers The Terminator T-800 Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 aka Arnold Schwarzenegger, made me question what exactly would loading up my picture, while joining up for some online fun and games, mean for my data sovereignty?

Only two months after the World Coin biometric data collection fiasco was concluded in December of 2025, following a two-year court controversy where a mass registration drive that offered Ksh.7000 worth of cryptocurrency for an illegal exchange of iris scans ended, Kenyans need to be much more careful about what constitutes their digital identity or persona within the internet ecosystem.

This is especially the case considering the history of companies like Cambridge Analytica in Kenya that collected data from Facebook using the app called “This Is Your Digital Life”.

Globally, it is estimated that 87 million users were affected. This was a result of data collection from 270,000 users whose profiles indirectly shared information from their contacts within friends lists.

Anecdotally, it is said that Cambridge Analytica acquired almost 40,000 data points to use in its Kenyan campaign activities.

While Kenyan data harvesting, at the time, was understood to be part of wider, less documented international operations, as a country and society, Kenyans must always be more vigilant than anyone, especially considering misinformation, disinformation, plus subsequent politically fuelled violence that is sure to follow as was the case in the past.

Fun as they are, individuals surrender a significant amount of sovereignty while taking part in challenges.

This is because by giving up their “selves” they become an inadvertent data provider of their own personal, biometric, or behavioural information that will be used by third-party platforms without their knowledge.

Such information is golden fodder for use in the emerging AI space in the creation of custom-made propaganda or fake news by unknown entities to entice individuals.

By playing, you offer consent and connect facial recognition imagery to other online recordings, thereby, generating a unique digital profile of yourself for which one has no idea how to delete after taking part in the challenge.

This could open you up to persistent tracking and geolocation, access to devices, plus a psychographic determination of who you’re interacting with or your preferences among other digitally determined information.

Like the World Coin saga, the new ChatGPT challenge possibly dupes participants into consent.

However, it is more dangerous considering it is online, unlike the physical biometric machines that were set up across the city to scan eyeballs.

That puts the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) at a loss because they may not have the means to ensure a mandatory Data Protection Impact Assessment is done before data is collected in line with the country’s Data Protection Act 2019.

If the data gets transferred overseas for data processing or storage, it would be beyond the reach of authorities once it gets mixed with all the other participants from around the world.

Also, Sam Altman’s ownership of both World Coin and ChatGPT should raise concern about the intent of harvested data, considering the controversies it raised in France, the United Kingdom, Bavaria, India, South Korea, Brazil, Spain, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.

Considering the emerging dangers, digital literacy must therefore go beyond critical ability to apply technology in utility for creation, consumption, or communication to also include online self-protection.

This is because well-versed individuals are the first line of defence by heightening their critical skills when using digital tools.

Understanding the digital economy should therefore not only be about how to use computers to get jobs, but also the socio-economic and political impact of technology to contextualise how these emerging tools are transforming Kenya.

The author, Leonard Wanyama, Regional Coordinator of the East African Tax and Governance Network (EATGN) and Chief Executive of the International Relations Society of Kenya (IRSK), follow on X @lennwanyama.