Facebook, Twitter and Instagram will soon be held accountable, accused of ignoring abuse and spreading a culture of hate among users. Instead of holding the abuser accountable, platforms will be forced to take action to prevent abuse from its inception.
It is expected that the UK Internet Safety Act will impose penalties of up to two years in prison on operators of electronic platforms, for failing to protect children from harmful content.
Britain will also require platforms to carry out thorough age checks, to determine which content is legal for adults but not suitable for young people, such as nutritional advice and the like, which will place a heavy burden on platforms’ accounts. held by users. giving false information about their real age.
Next year, the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSI) will also come into force, which limits harmful and offensive content but promises to protect media outlets from having their media content removed.
As for Turkey, its government asked Twitter to censor news during its recent election, while Brazil proposed a fake news law that would punish social media for failing to identify and remove the source of the news. misleading information, and that India publishes a bill to regulate the Internet. which makes the platforms responsible for the content.
Is it possible that the censorship of all these countries replaces the self-censorship of man?
In this regard, information security and technology expert, Engineer Omar Sami, said in his interview with the morning show on Sky News Arabia:
The lag in accounting for social media platforms in the face of the chaos the internet is witnessing at present, in terms of insults to others and society, can not only be cast on social media, but also due to the lack of role of certain countries and international organizations in determining the type of content whose publication is authorized. Content identification should not be limited to social networks alone. Internet policing is enforced by governments, and the bulk of the burden falls on the United States, along with the European Union and Britain, to control and monitor the Internet. The presence of other countries such as India and Brazil within the system makes it possible to reduce the negative impact of social networks, especially on young people. The United States, the European Union and Britain refuse to help define the meaning of hate speech, bullying and calls for violence within societies, despite their importance. No decision has been taken to date on the definition of this type of speech, despite the existence of numerous laws in this regard. The existence of a chapter in the Communications Law of the United States which exempts social networks from any responsibility for the content of these networks, and there is no American will to specify the content which should be prohibited on the Internet. The upcoming US elections are the main reason for the presence of the Internet Police because of the role of these networks in influencing the conduct of elections and the results. The existence of colossal financial fines rather than lawsuits for these social networks, for example Facebook and Google. The European Union law, which will be implemented in the coming months, imposes a fine of up to 6% per year of the total income of these networks. Applying these fines to social networks would encourage them to invest more in protecting the privacy of their users and in controlling their content without prejudice to freedom of expression.
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