Online safety & content laws in Somalia (2026)

Unlike the EU DSA or UK Online Safety Act, Somalia has enacted no dedicated online-content/platform-safety statute; the NCA's mandate under the Communications Act 2017 covers telecoms, internet, broadcasting and ICT technically but does not impose DSA-style content-moderation or platform-liability duties.

In August 2023 the Minister of Communications ordered ISPs to block TikTok, Telegram and betting site 1XBet, citing 'horrific' extremist content and misinformation linked to al-Shabaab; the ban is enforced via ISP-level blocking and remained in effect through 2025 with uneven enforcement.

In December 2024 the government reported banning roughly 12,000 websites and social media accounts it linked to al-Shabaab, part of a counter-propaganda strategy targeting the group's online recruitment and coordination.

In March 2025 the Ministry of Information directed a ban on publishing content deemed to 'threaten national security' or that 'misuses or fabricates information,' and news platform WardheerNews was blocked on Hormuud's network across Mogadishu and several federal states, alongside mass journalist arrests.

The armed group al-Shabaab has imposed bans on internet access and smartphones in territory it controls (later partly eased in some newly captured towns), adding a major non-governmental layer of internet restriction in parts of the country.

The Data Protection Act 2023 (Law No. 005/2023, signed 21 Mar 2023) created a Data Protection Authority for privacy, and Parliament approved a National Cybersecurity Law in January 2026 focused on critical-infrastructure protection and a national CIRT (SOM-CIRT) — neither establishes online-safety duties, age-verification, or platform content liability.