Group items tagged

corporate responsibility

Since the mid-1990s, internet companies have been absolved from liability – by Section 230 of the 1996 US Telecommunications Act and to some extent by the EU’s e-commerce directive – for the damage that their platforms do.

Sooner or later, democracies will have to bring these outfits under control and the only question is how best to do it. The white paper suggests one possible way forward.

essentially a responsibility for unintended consequences of the way you have set up and run your business.

The white paper says that the government will establish a new statutory duty of care on relevant companies “to take reasonable steps to keep their users safe and tackle illegal and harmful activity on their services”.

for example assessing and responding to the risk associated with emerging harms or technology

Stirring stuff, eh? It has certainly taken much of the tech industry aback, especially those for whom the idea of government regulation has always been anathema and who regard this fancy new “duty of care’ as a legal fantasy dreamed up in an undergraduate seminar.

To which the best riposte is perhaps the old Chinese proverb that the longest journey begins with a single step. This white paper is it.

In other cases, human moderators have had their decisions overturned. The Oversight Board also upheld Facebook’s decision to remove a dehumanizing ethnic slur against Azerbaijanis in the context of an active conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh disputed region.

But Facebook and other social media companies do not have to engage in a transparent, publicly accountable process to make their decisions. However, Facebook claims that in its decision-making, it upholds the human right of freedom of expression. However, freedom of expression does not mean the same thing to everyone

rivate organizations are currently the only consistent governors of data and social media.

However, the Oversight Board deals with only a small fraction of possible cases.

Facebook’s dominance in social media, however, is notable not because it’s a private company. Mass communication has been privatized, at least in the U.S., for a long time. Rather, Facebook’s insertion into the regulation of freedom of expression and its claim to support human rights is notable because these have traditionally been the territory of governments. While far from perfect, democracies provide citizens and other groups influence over the enforcement of human rights.

Facebook and other social media companies, however, have no such accountability to the public. Ensuring human rights needs to go beyond volunteerism by private companies. Perhaps with the Australia versus Facebook showdown, governments finally have an impetus to pay attention to the effects of technology companies on fundamental human rights.