Slashdot Mirror
Social Media Bosses Could Be Liable For Harmful Content, Leaked UK Plan Reveals (theguardian.com)
The United Kingdom is working on legislation that would hold social media executives liable for harmful content distributed on their platforms. The leaked white paper comes less than 24 hours after Australia passed sweeping legislation that threatens huge fines for social media companies and jail for their executives if they fail to rapidly remove "abhorrent violent material" from their platforms. From the report: Under plans expected to be published on Monday, the government will legislate for a new statutory duty of care, to be policed by an independent regulator and likely to be funded through a levy on media companies. The regulator -- likely initially to be Ofcom, but in the longer term a new body -- will have the power to impose substantial fines against companies that breach their duty of care and to hold individual executives personally liable.
The scope of the recommendations is broad. As well as social media platforms such as Facebook and search engines such as Google they take in online messaging services and file hosting sites. Other proposals in the online harm white paper include:
- Government powers to direct the regulator on specific issues such as terrorist activity or child sexual exploitation.
- Annual "transparency reports" from social media companies, disclosing the prevalence of harmful content on their platforms and what they are doing to combat it.
- Co-operation with police and other enforcement agencies on illegal harms, such as incitement of violence and the sale of illegal weapons. "Companies will be asked to comply with a code of practice, setting out what steps they are taking to ensure that they meet the duty of care -- including by designing products and platforms to make them safer, and pointing users who have suffered harm towards support," the report says. "The code of practice is also likely to include the steps companies will be expected to take to combat disinformation, including by using fact-checking services, particularly during election periods, and improving the transparency of political advertising. Regulated firms will be expected to comply with the code of practice -- or explain what other steps they are taking to meet the duty of care. However, many questions are left to the regulator to determine."
The scope of the recommendations is broad. As well as social media platforms such as Facebook and search engines such as Google they take in online messaging services and file hosting sites. Other proposals in the online harm white paper include:
- Government powers to direct the regulator on specific issues such as terrorist activity or child sexual exploitation.
- Annual "transparency reports" from social media companies, disclosing the prevalence of harmful content on their platforms and what they are doing to combat it.
- Co-operation with police and other enforcement agencies on illegal harms, such as incitement of violence and the sale of illegal weapons. "Companies will be asked to comply with a code of practice, setting out what steps they are taking to ensure that they meet the duty of care -- including by designing products and platforms to make them safer, and pointing users who have suffered harm towards support," the report says. "The code of practice is also likely to include the steps companies will be expected to take to combat disinformation, including by using fact-checking services, particularly during election periods, and improving the transparency of political advertising. Regulated firms will be expected to comply with the code of practice -- or explain what other steps they are taking to meet the duty of care. However, many questions are left to the regulator to determine."
a new statutory duty of care, to be policed by an independent regulator and likely to be funded through a levy on media companies
Unfortunately the modern educational system couldn't completely strip you of your humanity and free thought, so it's come to this now.
Really, it's for your own good though. That's why we insist you pay for it.
After spending trillions from our coffers and millions of lives to fight tyranny in the 20th century, we have become our own worst enemy. We don't support our best institutions, we betray our heritage, we don't have children and expect migrants to do our dirty work for us.
End of an era. You will miss it when it's gone. The future belongs to those who show up for it. The power struggles of the next century will be awful and may surpass the 20th century in death toll.
Captcha: phosgene. How appropriate.
When Tony Blair finally became PM he did two things first. 1) killed the house cat. 2) Invited Thatcher to be his first visitor at no.10 (and NO, she was not his predecessor- that was the ex-circus performer that replaced Thatcher as head of the Conservative party.)
The voters had thought they had empowered the exact opposite of the Tories- but Blair proudly demonstrated to the nation that as bad as the authoratarian Conservatives had been, he would be a million times worse.
Blair tore the power structure of Britain to shreds, and placed his loyalists into every aspect of power- way beyond party politics. But Blairites would rise to power and take control of the THREE major political parties, Conservatives, Liberals and labour of course. In power, Blair began the Orwellian remodelling of Britain.
Today Blair operates at a planetry level, where his loyalists have taken power in most major nations (which is why you had so much Trump hate when Blair's appointed horror, Clinton, failed to win- the Democrat and Republican parties are 100% controlled by Blairites). In the UK his proxies head essentially everything. There is a lasting public hatred of Blair in the UK, so Blair only has to put his name in public to the OPPOSITE of what he desires there (like Blair saying he is against 'brexit'), so anti-Blair sentiment gets the sheeple behind what he wants in the first place.
Social control is a key plank in the demonic Blair's greater plan. Blair's 'Academy' schools indoctrinate millions of UK kids. Censorship and total surveillance are Blair's go-to methods.
Social media giants were always part of the Blair plan. Hook the vast majority of users in centralised services and then bring down governmental regulation of said services. Today anything outside of the giants are backwaters with handfulls of users. Even Dissenter shows insanely tiny numbers of forum users on its busiest forums compared to even obscure forums on Reddit.
Today there is no need for Blair's people to worry about 'alternative' Internet sites when so few people use them. The giants have vacuumed the majority of online Humanity into easily controlled and regulated arenas. But Blair's team had to wait for the true giants to arise and addict the numbers they have done. And this needed the ole 'bait and switch'- a nursery slope 'wild west' to entice the sheeple before the Orwellian regulation hit.
Better again were the fools who wanted to speak to wide audiences, but used the infrastrucure of the giants rather that building their own. Now these people are 'deplatformed' for 'wrongthink', and if they all too late try to form their own platforms, almost no-one follows them.
Sites like Slashdot inform the sheeple that they MUST trust the mass media outlets that all spread Tony Blair's lies about WMD in Iraq. Because after all it is only 'logical' to trust sources scientifically proven to be the world's most co-ordinated liars.
Freedom of speech- dead.
Freedom of assembly- dead
Freedom of conscience- dead (in the UK, kids from 'muslim' families are taught at school they must remain 'muslims' because only racist extremists believe in freedom of conscience)
These freedoms have been very rare in Human History, so for Blair to wipe them out once again is actually true to how this planet usually operates. Which is why Blair gets so little resistance, and certainly none from outlets like Slashdot.
If you think it is bad now, think about how awful it will be in a few decades time when things like Blair's plan to BAN private car ownership are implemented. When Blair's total surveillance society has been brainwashed into every sheeple from birth.
The power of the computer allows a thing that was before only theoretical, no matter how desirable to earlier demons in our History. All Blair had to ensure was that ordinary people lost their say about the oppressive use of this tech- exactly as envisaged in Orwell's 1984. Today's young Brits 'think' only in ways their Academy schools have commanded them
No, but there was certainly a time when the idea of *criminally prosecuting* someone for making a joke video of himself teaching his GF's dog to do a Nazi salute would have been laughable. And there was most certainly a time when no police officer worth his uniform would have even *considered* just turning his back on evidence of a large group of men raping underage girls out of fear of being called a racist if he were to act on that horrible evidence.
The UK has never enjoyed the robust free speech protections of the U.S., it's true. But there was at least a time when they weren't FUCKING BATSHIT INSANE.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.