The UK Government recently published a white paper with a broad set of proposals to tackle online harm. These include a new regulatory framework, to establish a duty of care for online companies for the first time, and the set-up of a specific regulator to enforce the new rules.
The Fake News inquiry is over, but there’s no legislation in sight
The Committee for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport of the UK Parliament (DCMS Committee) has now completed its inquiry into Fake News, which lasted throughout 2018. The inquiry started as an investigation on the spread of disinformation and its role in influencing elections, and soon turned to the link between tech companies’ practices and the protection of citizens’ personal data.
Far-reaching regulation of social media in the UK draws closer
The interim report published by the DCMS committee of the UK parliament has cast a light not only on the role of social media platforms in spreading disinformation, but more importantly on the willingness of policymakers to take the matter into their own hands. The report issues a set of recommendations which would result in strong regulatory safeguards around platforms’ activity. If the UK government takes the committee’s recommendations on board, the self-regulatory approach could be off the table, in the UK at least.
DCMS committee unhappy with social media’s approach to fake news
The hearing carried out by the UK’s Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) parliamentary committee on 8 February 2018 in Washington DC with executives of three of the main global social media platforms (Google, Twitter, Facebook) showed how much distance currently separates tech companies from regulators and policymakers with regard to tackling “fake news”, hate speech, and other related illegal activities.
