Turning the Screws
Pressure continues to build on how digital platforms handle content. The MadHATTERs Editorial, 1 July 2020
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Time to get tough with the ‘pandemic of misinformation’ that’s corroding democracy. So says the UK Parliament’s Democracy and Digital Technologies committee as it calls for stronger regulation, including penalties of up to 4% of tech giants’ global turnover, to reign in the ‘unchecked power’ of digital platforms.
The committee’s report, which also recommends regulating political advertising, is the latest tightening of screws on social media’s content moderation practices. In recent weeks the US Senate has seen a flurry of bills looking to reform the Communications Decency Act’s Section 230, which protects these platforms from legal liability over third-party content. For instance, the bipartisan PACT Act introduced last week will open them up to federal civil lawsuits and state enforcement.
Those seeking more immediate results have turned to the power of the advertising dollar. The ad-boycott campaign to protest Facebook’s handling of misinformation and hate speech gained momentum last week as big names like Verizon and Unilever halted their social media advertising. Last Friday, without referencing the boycotts — nor the resulting plunge in Facebook’s share price — Mark Zuckerberg announced some new measures to tackle misinformation.
But waiting for new laws or public pressure on platforms to govern a centralised Internet are not the only ways towards a better Internet. The solutions will also have to come from ‘the innovation of many’; a term Dataswift CEO Irene Ng used in this recent BBC podcast. We need to continue working together to reshape the Internet into something we want: a decentralised Internet for the benefit of all rather than a few large conglomerates.
MadHATTERs is a weekly newsletter covering technology, personal data, and the Internet. Its perspective championing decentralised personal data is led by Dataswift with the Hub of All Things (HAT) technology. If you like what you read, subscribe to receive MadHATTERs in your inbox. Find out more about the HAT at www.hubofallthings.com
