The UK Parliament wants to regulate Facebook

• It suggested that UK regulators “investigate whether Facebook specifically has been involved in any anti-competitive practices.” In other words, is Facebook a monopoly?
  
  
• It suggested that Facebook be regulated as “a new category of tech company” that is “not necessarily either a ‘platform’ or a ‘publisher.’” The committee would like Facebook to “assume legal liability for content identified as harmful after it has been posted by users.” Today, tech platforms like Facebook and Twitter are not held liable if their users post something illegal as long as they remove it.
  
  
• It suggested that a “Code of Ethics” be created to identify what is considered “harmful content.” Facebook and other platforms would then be regulated to ensure that they don’t spread that content.
  
  

Maddog wrote:The cries to regulate Facebook are getting louder and louder.
This week they’re coming from a familiar foe: The UK’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, which has been investigating Facebook’s role in spreading disinformation. The Committee issued a new report on Sunday that said, “Facebook intentionally and knowingly violated both data privacy and anti-competition laws” in the UK — a conclusion the committee came to based on a cache of internal emails it collected last fall.
The report also calls for more regulation for Facebook, and described the company as “digital gangsters” for how it handles its users’ data.
The committee suggested a number of ways to regulate Facebook:

• It suggested that UK regulators “investigate whether Facebook specifically has been involved in any anti-competitive practices.” In other words, is Facebook a monopoly?
  
  
• It suggested that Facebook be regulated as “a new category of tech company” that is “not necessarily either a ‘platform’ or a ‘publisher.’” The committee would like Facebook to “assume legal liability for content identified as harmful after it has been posted by users.” Today, tech platforms like Facebook and Twitter are not held liable if their users post something illegal as long as they remove it.
  
  
• It suggested that a “Code of Ethics” be created to identify what is considered “harmful content.” Facebook and other platforms would then be regulated to ensure that they don’t spread that content.
  
  

https://www.recode.net/2019/2/18/18229833/facebook-regulation-uk-india-germany-ftc



That's a hard fucking no from me.  The weasels dont like being able to control the narrative and despise large numbers of citizens exchanging unapproved ideas negative of the government. 


Social media has been a game changer and the folks running the show dont like the game being changed.  

Damian Collins’ committee has this morning published its report into “Disinformation and ‘fake news’” and off the bat it is a full-on onslaught of new heavy-handed regulations that could herald the end of a free and open internet.

The report recommends that tech companies cease to be seen as platforms, and shift to being seen much more as publishers, establishing a new Government written “Code of Ethics” overseen by yet another new quango given “statutory powers to monitor relevant tech companies”:

“tech companies assume legal liability for content identified as harmful after it has been posted by users”

Calling to end platform neutral status for internet companies would end social media as we know it. If Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or any other user-centred host of content became classified as publishers, why would any company allow anything to be posted without central approval first? Doing anything else would leave that company legally liable for whatever its users posted on the site…

Publisher status would necessitate pre-approval by legal teams for everything that was posted, so that companies would avoid getting sued. A precautionary principle would have to be adopted – we would end up with a small group of out-of-touch politicians and technocrats deciding what is acceptable to say on the internet. In reality this would lead to a mass exodus of global companies from the UK…

The UK is home to more tech companies than anywhere else in Europe. There is a tech boom of new startups and more ‘tech unicorn’ billion dollar valued companies than anywhere else in Europe. Collins’ hugely misguided plans would destroy all of that if they were ever implemented…

https://order-order.com/2019/02/18/damian-collins-calls-end-internet-freedom/

WhoseYourWolfie wrote:

This is what happens when clueless fuckwit politicians start contemplating matters way beyond their pitiful pre-neanderthal comprehensions...

And appoint clueless inbred wastrels to various government departments and committees --  once again putting nepotism and party loyalty ahead of actual merit..

Do those gormless fuckwits with Napoleon complexes in the Tory Party really believe that they're in any position to dictate to a company like Facebook how they should be behaving  ?