Hours after the Court of Appeal overturned a month-long jail sentence of KMPDU officials, a flood of seemingly ethnically charged Facebook updates attributed to secretary general Ouma Oluga swept social media.
The sentiments posted in 2014 show a different side of Oluga who has largely attained a hero status on account of his willingness to serve a sentence
while championing the implementation of a 2013 Collective Bargaining Agreement signed between medics and the state.
Read:
"To the Kikuyu country, One day it won't be all yours ... It may take one year, 20 years or 100 years to come but one day you'll be in the side of those not in power," one of the post reads.
The post goes on to warn that the dominance of Kikuyus in positions of power will end, but signs off his post with a clarification that he is addressing "the Kikuyu country and not the Kikuyu person".
The post has elicited sharp reactions from a section of social media with the exception of Oluga himself who has remained silent on the matter.
Opponents of the posts' legitimacy have, however, attributed it to a smear campaign meant to divert attention from the plight of doctors, and instead turn focus to Oluga's
alleged "dark" social media past.
Photoshopped posts?
A theory that has been fronted to this end is that the original posts could have been altered digitally to their current unflattering state.
As it turns out, there are several ways to alter a post with a somewhat complex, but common approach being the use of photo editing software Adobe Photoshop.
Simpler means involve both mobile applications and online update generators that have been put to use to counter the accusations of tribalism that were leveled against Oluga when the posts first appeared.
One such application is the Fake Post Maker for FB, a mobile application available on the Google Play App store that has an editable template of a Facebook account.
Once downloaded, it allows a user to simulate a genuine post from an account image, to likes and even a time stamp.
A screen grab of a fake Facebook update generator application that is available for download on the Google Play store. /COURTESY
An online version of such a tool is simitator.com which goes further to allow generation of a fake tweet on micro-blogging site Twitter.
To prove the point further, several fake posts were circulated of Oluga allegedly predicting his and his colleagues' jailing when they failed to honour a directive by the Labour Court to end their strike in favour of negotiations.
Other fake posts that have emerged include some attributed to State House Head of Digital Dennis Itumbi that suggest that he was critical of President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto in 2012, a year before the general elections which the duo won on a Jubilee Alliance ticket.
While the fake posts are seemingly convincing, they are distinguished from actual posts as only being images shared on social media.
These fake update generators exist for mainstream social media platforms such as Facebook accounts, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, and Instagram.
Telling the real from the fake posts involves simple measures such as comparing implied interaction with the fake posts to actual interactions on the accounts in question according to dates stamps on the fake posts.
Several fake posts are likely to surface around topical issues, especially as the country moves towards the August 8 general election.
Users should, therefore, be aware of the existence of these tools and applications and the likely implications of their use.