Politicians from 9 countries call for regulation of social media

Thestar.com
November 28, 2018
Alex Boutilier

Politicians from nine nations have banded together to call on their countries to regulate social media giants like Facebook to curb the spread of disinformation campaigns and hate speech online.

In a joint statement released Tuesday, politicians meeting in London for an “International Grand Committee” on disinformation and “fake news” countries should bring in rules requiring social media companies to take action on “harmful and misleading content.”

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg declined an invitation to give evidence Tuesday before politicians from nine countries who were participating in the British Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee investigation into disinformation and fake news in London.

“Representative democracy is too important and too hard-won to be left undefended from online harms, in particular aggressive campaigns of disinformation launched from one country against citizens of another” the statement read.

“Social media companies should be held liable if they fail to comply with (an) order to remove harmful and misleading content from their platforms, and should be regulated to ensure they comply with this requirement.”

The largely unprecedented statement was signed by politicians from nine countries including Canada and close allies like the United Kingdom and France, but also Belgium, Ireland, Brazil, Argentina, Latvia and Singapore.

Together, the countries have been frustrated in their efforts to force Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify in the wake of the company’s Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Bob Zimmer, the Conservative MP whose ethics and privacy committee has been leading the Canadian investigation into that scandal -- and politics in the age of social media, more generally -- said preventing misinformation and hate campaigns online is crucial now that social media has become “the public square.”

“We want to deal with the bullies who influence that public square,” Zimmer said in a phone interview from London.

“What we need Facebook to do is do a better job of policing those bullies. It’s not that we want to kill the platform in any way, we just want to make sure they’re dealing with the bullies and the fact of the matter is they haven’t dealt with the bullies adequately.”

But while MPs on both sides of the House of Commons are endorsing regulating platforms like Facebook -- and despite Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s warning the company could face regulations if it didn’t curb the spread of disinformation -- Canada’s Liberal government has taken no action in that direction.

Nate Erskine-Smith, the Toronto Liberal MP who vice-chairs the ethics committee, said it’s “evident” that Facebook failed to protect its users’ privacy in the Cambridge Analytica affair, where millions of users had their personal data harvested to fuel election-influencing activities across the world.

“We are well beyond the point of trusting Facebook and other social media platforms to police themselves,” said Erskine-Smith.

“(Facebook) agreed today that the company should have done more to prevent election interference, including in 2016, should have done more to stop hate speech in Myanmar … We need both strong regulations for social media platforms like Facebook and strong regulators with effective tools to enforce those rules.”

The declaration is in no way binding on Canada. But a frequent refrain in the debate over regulating social media companies is that no one country can do it alone. Zimmer said he hopes Tuesday’s meeting was a chance to build an international consensus on these issues.

“The same foreign influence concerns (for the 2019 election) I have are held by Ireland, are held by Brazil, are held by Latvia. And so once you see that you’re not just an island … that it’s more of a global concern tells me we’re on the right page,” Zimmer said.

“Working together, this is how we can affect some really good change.”