Why Ghana Needs to Stop Harmful Content Before It Goes Viral, Not After

There is a conversation happening in Ghana right now that touches almost everyone who scrolls, posts, or shares something online, and it is worth paying attention to. Michael Donyina Mensah, Executive Director of the Center for Public Opinion and Awareness, recently spoke on Morning Starr with Isaac Addae about how the country handles harmful content on social media. His point was simple but important. Ghana keeps reacting after the damage is done instead of building systems that stop the damage from happening in the first place.

The Problem With Waiting Until Something Goes Viral

Right now, the pattern looks something like this. Something harmful gets posted. It spreads. People react. Then, eventually, the police get involved and someone gets arrested. Donyina Mensah questioned whether this approach is even realistic given how stretched Ghana's police service already is.

He put it plainly, saying that if the expectation is for the police to chase down everyone who posts something inflammatory or harmful, they simply do not have the capacity for that. And when you think about how fast content moves online, especially on platforms built for virality, it makes sense. By the time law enforcement steps in, the content has often already reached thousands, sometimes millions, of people. The harm has already happened.

A Different Way to Think About Solutions

Instead of leaning on arrests as the main tool, Donyina Mensah is pushing for something more practical, mechanisms that catch harmful content early, before it has the chance to spread widely. This shifts the responsibility away from purely reactive policing and toward smarter systems built around prevention.

One of his more specific suggestions was the idea of Ghana-specific community guidelines for TikTok. He asked a question that feels worth sitting with, why can't Ghana have its own content code for a platform that so many Ghanaians use every single day?

Under this kind of system, harmful content could be blocked at the platform level, and accounts that repeatedly break the rules could face restrictions or be required to take down offending posts. Instead of chasing individuals after the fact, the platform itself becomes part of the solution.

Why This Matters Beyond Just Policy

If you create content for a living, run a brand online, or simply spend time on social media in Ghana, this conversation is not just about government policy. It is about the environment all of us are creating together. A platform with clearer, locally relevant guidelines could mean safer spaces for creators, fewer harmful pile-ons, and less reliance on public shaming or panic-driven reporting to get something addressed.

Donyina Mensah's overall argument comes down to this. Letting harmful content go viral first and dealing with consequences later is reactive, exhausting, and often too late. Building clear guidelines and prevention systems upfront is a more sustainable path forward, both for the platforms and for the people using them.

The Bigger Picture

This is one of those moments where a policy conversation actually reflects something many of us feel daily. Online spaces move fast, and by the time something harmful is flagged, the exposure has already happened. Whether or not Ghana adopts platform-specific guidelines like the ones being proposed, the underlying idea is one worth remembering. Prevention will almost always protect people better than punishment after the fact.

Source: starrfm.com