10 social networks ignored UK government consultations

The wrong medium for the message

> consultation with social media on such matters has gone badly: just four of fourteen social networks invited to consultation talks showed up.

Why did Hancock expect them to turn up in person. This sort of thing sounds ideal for a group chat on Facebook.

Half a century

It was only in 1968 that the official role of the Lord Chamberlain in censorship was lifted, leaving the job to unofficial channels. Today's fuss over online contents looks a lot like a call to restore the Lord Chamberlain's role, with the difference being in the sheer numbers of people submitting themselves (albeit not always intentionally) to be censored.

"should use AI . ."

Indeed. If only we had AI, there would be a great many things we could try and apply it to.

What I find interesting is the "social sites should police themselves" attitude. Neatly allows you to wash your hands of the issue, doesn't it ?

You don't ask supermarkets to "police" their customers, do you ? Malls do not have SWAT teams. So why should it be up to social sites to decide what to take down ? Youtube does takedowns based on DCMA requests and that is generally very badly handled because there is very little recourse. You want to see that reproduced on FaceBook and Twitter ? I don't use them and don't really care, but I am convinced that it is a governments' job to force the application of the law.

So someone is not happy about something that has been published, he goes to the cops and files a complaint. The cops check that the illegal nature of the thing is true, then send a takedown request - which is mandatory because The Law - and the site complies, alerting the original poster that a specific piece of his published data has been placed under legal lockdown. If that one is not happy about it, he can file a counter-claim and go to court.

Of course, depending on the level of illegality, he might not even need to go and file a counter-claim ; the police could be knocking at his door to tell him in person that what he posted was not a good idea and could you please follow us, sir ?

Online Carp???

When Melanie has finished making the covfefe maybe she could stop her partner from spreading lies.

(may need heavy frying pan)

Pray tell us

Was El Reg one of the fourteen companies? Or are we too puny to be relevant?

I have only one thing to say...

"He also revealed (PDF) the government is working on a White Paper considering how to ensure social media services verify members’ age so that age restrictions in their terms of service aren’t ignored. ®"

This isn't going to end well.

Even if such a magic machine were possible, can you imagine the size of the thing? It'd never be finished being built!

According to a quick bit of Google-Fu, Facebook alone has 300 petabytes of data and adds another 4 petabytes per day, contains 250 billion photographs which grows at a rate of 350 million per day, has nearly 1.5 billion daily active users/2 billion monthly users and growing fast, etc. - which apparently all need scanning and judging automagically to somehow always agree with the government?

Oh look, a flying pig... Haha.

James said social networks should use AI to do the job

Brilliant proof that politicians DO pay attention to what is going on around them and ALWAYS come up with a measured, simple and yet PERFECT solution to ANY problem.

I say, bring the AI to end all wars!

p.s. and BREXIT!!!!

:/

"Data Protection Act’s penalties of up to four per cent of global turnover for non-compliance, with lesser penalties applied first."

Actually I think that's GDPR, and DPA only has fines upto £500,000 which for someone like facebook, is just a drop in the ocean.

I propose...

We have our next politicians be AI's instead.

Not belonging to any party as such, just randomly chosen parameter "AI".

It's unlikely they'll function all that well. However, the current lot decidedly don't either, so at least this way we have a chance of improving things.

Perhaps ...

Someone should remove her hashtags. With a machete.

4 out of 14? that many? I'm surprised.. As they know that they can configure themselves to serve UK clients and still get paid from their revenue sources without a technical or legal presence in UK jurisdiction. It's strange that 4 bothered...

The government invited 14 'social networks' but that term in just a buzz word for a site that lets users upload and share their own content.

Now if we consider that there are 1000s of forums and chat rooms that allow people to do the same as 'social networks' and upload and share content then the problem is no longer the fact that only 4 bother to show up, but that the government are only considering whatever laws they decide to bring in will only effect 14 platforms. Where as in reality it could kill off a lot of smaller sites run by communities for none profit because they can't employ moderators or have the expertise to set up AI.

Next, the UK government will demand

That the representatives of the dark web sites come before them to give evidence.

Under penalty of....well...something pretty severe.

"ignored UK government consultations"

And why not?

The government ignores public consultations all the time.

"The government ignores public consultations all the time."

The fact that the government has called for public consultations is an indication that they've already decided what they want to do and are looking to rubberstamp it, no matter what happens at the consultations.