Governments around world are starting to look at companies like Facebook in a manner that is quite different from how they used to approach these kinds of things. The impact that social media platforms might end up having, especially enormous platforms with billions of users like Facebook, can be quite huge. It’s affecting how people interact with democratic institutions, creating a lot of doubt with regards to the information that is out there and is leading to a number of other problems all of which need to be taken quite seriously for the betterment of society.
Section 230 is a law in the US that makes it so that social media companies can’t be held liable for the content that other people end up posting on their platforms, but a perceived bias against conservative opinions as well as a desire to fight against misinformation has lead lawmakers from both sides of the political divide to consider making revisions to this law. These revisions would create a new regulatory model that would potentially govern social media in the same way that publishers are regulated, namely by holding social media sites like Facebook accountable for the content that gets posted on their platforms. Alternatively, regulations similar to what the telecom industry tends to see are also being proposed.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook should be liable for at least some of the content that gets posted by its users, but at the same time rejected the idea of being regulated as a publisher saying that Facebook does not publish any of its own content. He also spoke about the differences between telecom companies and social media platforms, saying that social media requires its own regulatory framework that takes all of its specificities into account rather than lumping it in with companies it has nothing in common with.
Photo: GETTY IMAGES
Read next: Bug in Facebook Messenger’s Android App Caused Gross Privacy Violations Among Users
Section 230 is a law in the US that makes it so that social media companies can’t be held liable for the content that other people end up posting on their platforms, but a perceived bias against conservative opinions as well as a desire to fight against misinformation has lead lawmakers from both sides of the political divide to consider making revisions to this law. These revisions would create a new regulatory model that would potentially govern social media in the same way that publishers are regulated, namely by holding social media sites like Facebook accountable for the content that gets posted on their platforms. Alternatively, regulations similar to what the telecom industry tends to see are also being proposed.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook should be liable for at least some of the content that gets posted by its users, but at the same time rejected the idea of being regulated as a publisher saying that Facebook does not publish any of its own content. He also spoke about the differences between telecom companies and social media platforms, saying that social media requires its own regulatory framework that takes all of its specificities into account rather than lumping it in with companies it has nothing in common with.
Photo: GETTY IMAGESRead next: Bug in Facebook Messenger’s Android App Caused Gross Privacy Violations Among Users
