Comes. On aljazeera. Britain takes steps to regulate content that appears on social media it says it wants to protect users from what it considers harmful material but is regulation the also and cant be done without violating pastoral freedoms this is inside story. I know that and welcome to the program i must say now its a long running debate how should we regulate the internet and social media sites including facebook and twitter allow us to share information theyve also become places for illegal and harmful content to thrive the u. K. Now wants those fans to be more responsible the government will appoint its broadcast regulator off calm as an online watchdog with powers to force companies to take down session material we have a lot to discuss with our guests but fast this report from paul brennan and until my name is megan heads pressurized to send a nude photograph of herself to a boy at school within a day meghan hintons private image had been circulated across the internets it can take days even weeks to be removed for social media sites so that could have a devastating impact you know what somethings up there no irony is out in the wide web people can save its their phone so even when the social Media Company remains its still in peoples possessions social media is largely selfregulating platforms like facebook you tube instagram and tick talk largely set their own rules and standards sometimes relying on the platform users themselves to flag up anything inappropriate the u. K. Government has been consulting since last summer on how to introduce a new online homes law to put the responsibility on social Media Companies to remove harmful content Child Protection charities certainly support that. Ultimately regulation is required thats what we would argue the big tech giants need to be held to account the regulator needs teeth so they not only need to monitor whats going on and talk about it publicly but also hold to account these multibillion pound platforms one of the social media giants were available for interview prefer ing to issue written statements the boss of you tube u. K. Said to help keep our Community Safe we havent waited for regulation weve created new technology hired expert reviewers worked with external specialists and reviewed our policies to ensure they fit for the evolving challenges we face online facebooks head of Public Policy said we have clear rules about what is and isnt allowed on our part forms and are investing billions in safety we look forward to carrying on the discussion with the Government Parliament and the rest of industry as this process continues the regulation of web content is a complex area which touches on issues such as freedom of speech censorship and jurisdiction and theres also the question of defining what is subjectively offensive and what actually qualifies as harmful but it seems the u. K. Government is prepared to try to tackle the issue and the full details of the new law will be published later in the spring paul brennan aljazeera london. Well lets now bring in our guests in cambridge we have david adams he is Deputy Director at the center for intellectual property and informational at Cambridge University in brussels we had an escape shes the europe policy analyst at access now thats a Digital RightsAdvocacy Group and in oxford we have neera silva shes the director of the Journalism Fellowship Program at the Reuters Institute for the study of journalism at Oxford University welcome to you or david i want to start with you because social media is fundamentally about individuals uploading their own content to these platforms right so where does the responsibility lie then with the individuals or with the platforms and if we then hand that responsibility to the platforms does that then mean that individuals then dont have the accountability for what they post. Well i dont think anyones saying that ultimately if an original publisher or even an individual uploads Information Online that they are responsible for the legality of it but we have to be aware that unlike you know 20 or 30 years ago particularly in the offline world when it was largely professional actors who had a name an address or were located all today we have hundreds of millions of amateur individuals uploading often anonymously in a mass in a way which is frankly as your report showed impossible for origins to usually take action on the course they will take action in the most serious cases and at the same time weve moved. Into major ease being literally like a print factory more than a neutral online equivalent to curating forms which monetize organize a ranging and develop a content alongside. Andy to take a decree of responsibility for their sex over their service as a whole so i dont think its about saying that they are the original publisher. And i dont think its about saying that individuals have no responsibility but its about creating the appropriate responsibility for the new platforms ringback when it comes to the content then narrow let me pose a question that paul Brennan Austin has report what is the difference between offensive and harmful content and who gets to decide that well this is the ultimate question and we need to look at who the audience are so when the audience a children then yes there are fit types of content that you would not want them to keep in all graffiti acts so in violent images most Platform Companies have an age limit you need to be a part of certain age not to have an account with facebook for example but it is often something that sites up to and their company. Company will say its something that parents have to take charge of them its not something they can police the 2nd point is that there are existing laws already against much of this content its illegal to distribute child pornography in any format or to spread hate speech or to incite violence so these laws already exist in the public space and there is a strawberry strong argument for saying it should be implemented in the private space but the idea of making private companies somehow responsible for deciding what should and should be said its a worrying trend also because at social media i guess speed is also a huge issue because of so much being uploaded and how quickly it spreads so if the platforms then going to be held responsible might they then are on the side of caution because there wouldnt be necessarily a chance for an appeal here so might they then take down more content than is perhaps necessary and let me put that question to what do you think. Thank you very much this is that ultimately extremely important issue here 1st of all we see prevailing trend in that only in the u. K. But also in other european and non european legislations to slowly shift more and more responsibility on Online Platforms and usually to adopt the approach to illegal or potentially harmful content focusing on the subject removals and deletions of such a type of content this of course imposes of areas Human Rights Concerns and especially for freedom of expression online users as specially if the platforms are required to remove these com thanks in very short time frames that ben wont create any possibility for content providers or online users in general to challenge decisions of the platforms and of course it also creates a risk for all removal of allegedly met speech from Online Platforms so a listener will theres also been a big focus in terms of this legislation on online bullying as well and when we talk about personal freedoms privacy is obviously a huge one so if we are talking about online bullying and a lot of this stuff i imagine goes on and like private messages as well does that mean that we are winning to broaden the oversights of these platforms and does that create issues around privacy. It definitely does but i think there is another quite important issue which is also addressed by the u. K. White paper on online harms and thats that this thing between harmful but leave legal content and content that actually violates the existing National Laws and when we speak about Cyber Bullying or and other extremely harmful from societal phenomena online it doesnt necessarily always mean that they actually need to trash hold of illegality from the national law perspective. And this is extremely important and its also part of the concerns that Many Civil Society groups raised some around the paper was actually published and we are very happy to see that actually the government has been very receptive and tries to actually accommodate our concerns when it comes to legal by the harmful its extremely important that these definitions are not to overboard and to wake and these definitions also need to be then clearly stated and it needs to be important that even if the terms of service of the spot forms is being enforced when actually either of the firing and that the acting such a content. These terms of service are applied transparently and the definitions are not actually harmful to freedom of expression online. Then of course the issue of privacy is are also extremely important and its important in european framework for instance the g. D. P. Areas being not only for complied with but also satisfactory and always in favor of users right to privacy sure so there are a lot of laws that already exist but here i do want to talk about capacity in terms of regulation and the implementation of these laws right so i see you tube at the moment employs about 10000 people and monitoring removing content policy Development Facebook and instagram have more than 35000 people working on safety and security of com at the moment employs about a 1000 people. And theyre also monitoring the media so hows this going to work david flutie well i mean just to come back on a few of those points i mean no one is suggesting theyre not many freedom of expression issues but i think weve been naive to underestimate that you 2 and other platforms like google depend on User Generated Content thats how they can make profits and they even make profits in relation to illegal content i mean in relation to copyright that is maybe the clearest and the copyright directive from the e. U. Is trying to address that but they too depend on being free and open or bit curated also platforms and so we shouldnt be too blinkered in our analysis just in thinking about over removal d theres been a lot of under the removal of totally illegal content in force mint or other forms of illegality like a piece of harassment towline out democratic governments are responding to the concerns of their citizens in trying to tackle that as a human rights issue in terms of the past now in terms of the resources yes i think youre right that you know we have lots of laws to clean here in europe and even with brett sit here in the u. K. But we havent been very effective typically online and its also in the you know the Information Commission which has roles in relation to the right to be sick gotten and Search Engines which are part of state protection but also not out of the light harms regulation has 700 people and it said that of com has a 1000 people but facebook and google have turnovers which make it very difficult to enforce the law d when there is motivated opposition to it so we need we need to up our game in terms of public regulation and i think this this is a start it will be complex that its important when youre talking about companies there were huge turnovers near i want to turn here because a lot of this then becomes about self selfregulation for a lot of these platforms and there are a lot of smaller platform startups and other companies will be affected by the 1000 or so how are they going to cope are they going to have the resources to be able to do this kind of selfregulation or well it depends what these companies are doing it if i could talk about journalism in particular because this is an area where there are very legitimate concerns which is. How will these powerful Companies Judge the validity of your story some of which would do contain disturbing content that can be stories of violent sexual attack or kind of very violent imagery for your report on a conflict zone and who makes a judgment call over whether the stories are going to be able to be viewed on social media or not and when you look at the b. To reduce tree it is more and more people get their news via Facebook TwitterGoogle Search that from use organizations own home pages so this is a very important source of news for many people and i know that several editors are worried that these kind of regulations will make it harder for them to push out the 2 stories they want to push out so there are real not for freedom of expression and all issues around that there then. Absolutely and the other thing youve got to be very careful of is how this plays out globally so when we had worries over misinformation and fake news that the governments that were the quickest to implement fake news laws were ones that had north or terry in bed who were the best defenders of free speech and that wants implemented like in singapore we used immediately to attack critical media and opposition parties so a lot like this the past in britain can play out globally at least companies themselves a global so we need to be aware of how things get seen around the World Trading well i see that facebook has welcomed this and saying that this is a step towards a consolidation approach to protection on the internet i do want to zoom out on your point neera and look at what some of the other countries in the world are doing here so well the u. K. Is not the only country thats wrestling with this issue germany already has a special law that says social Media Companies must remove banned content within 24 hours or face fines of up to 54000000 dollars a strain also passed similar legislation last year tech executives can face prison for failing to remove extremely violent content france and new zealand created the. Its called last year that was in response to a shooting at 2 mosques that was then live streamed on facebook its a plan to limit the spread of violent content and china has what many call the great fire wall where several web sites are banned outright and content is obviously strictly regulated so let me ask you then where is the middle ground then between protection and censorship. I think there was a very important issue raised here as i think that many of these laws that you already mentioned rather that thats their garo also socalled german and. Also as well as other legislative efforts they are strictly focusing on the content removal and the way how the content is actually being regulated by the also should focus on how the content is actually being distributed across the platform of course the issues such as online hate speech or also this information are deeply rooted societal phenomena and to expect that the simple removal in an extremely short timeframe it will be actually the long Term Solution would be of course and even their own mind and that particularly friendly towards human rights of online users so i think both are very important on the one hand the regulation that will actually set minimum human rights standards that will as that village the environment of the logue Legal Certainty meaning that the companies as well as users clearly understand their duties and responsibilities and at the same time the proper accountability and transparency mechanisms are extremely important when it comes to transparency there are already within the laws that you also mentioned rather thats nets they get or the french socalled war both of them actually contain the transparency requirements for Online Platforms have ever these transparency requirements need to also focus not only on the quantity of the removed content but they need to inform the policy and give the overall picture about what is actually happening on these platforms only the research and evidence based policymaking can actually then create a satisfactory responses the societal phenomena online so i would say regulation that says minimum standards the minimum duty of care for Online Platforms and everything that is human and all these provisions have to be human rights and user centric in that regard. And then of course the whole entire issue of how to nation and how to mated measures are being often deployed by platforms for content regulation thats another important topic that needs to be discussed and certain standards need to be actually set in the regulation well i want to ask about that because you talk about the speed of things going viral the speed of things spreading is there then the space or should there then be the space for ai Artificial Intelligence to step in here to take things down in real time david let me ask you about that and are there concerns about ai here. Well i think this brings up the whole interface with general Data Protection which is then mentioned general Data Protection both require privacy to be protected Search Engines that sell the heat on that with the right basic oxer but it also regulates the backend processing and backend processing can be about monetizing contents and that can can can fuel illegality but its also how far we can go in monitoring and managing content in order to ensure legalities through ai but i think ai is is coming i think it is part of the solution in terms of manifest in the galaxy in the governments right to focus on what is a legal route and getting into a complex debate about harmful culture at least not to go to children because that really would be d a dangerous censorship but i think a i needs to be accountable and transparent and its the role of in fact the Information Commissioner and protection workers to ensure that a operates within a a framework which is human centric but because of the scale of the homes online and you know the need for rapid action i think the ai has to play a role when were talking about building a broader framework right so mira i want to ask you about the different approaches weve talked about different approaches different laws from Different Countries and it does seem rather ad hoc so is there the space then or should there be the space for a universal declaration of sorts given that the internet is a shared Global Resource should there be a consolidated global approach where all the countries come together and make a plan. Well that would be nice in theory and i know that you know sco has suggested the idea of can Digital Rights the universal set of Digital Rights that every citizen of the world has a right to claim this is obviously problematic in that Different Countries have very different approaches steep political discourse to free and inch to what is the Cultural Values whats acceptable in terms of sexuality and religion and so you dont want to kind of consensus that erode significant rights in certain countries to bring it to a kind of level that everyone accepts that said i think there certainly is argument for a global set of standards but this is something that needs to also come from the companies themselves that need to truly invest globally and making sure they understand all the cultures of all the countries that they operate in and we talk about i am. Not a neutral force written by human beings who bring in their own biases to coding and we see this certainly the way some ai code in terms of gender and race you know facial recognition its not at all of space so we need to be very aware that any solution has to work for everybody in all parts of the world and for men and for women and this is something that can only really be done on a human scale it has to be done by humans and we have to get that right 1st before we try to automate it absolutely well speaking of getting it right is one of the things that this law does talk about is punishment and i want to ask david briefly about this i say in germany were saying companies can be fined up to 15000000 euros in a stray aside from being jailed a company could be fined up to 10 percent of its global turnover so what kinds of fines are we looking at here in the u. K. Well at the moment the British Government has published its interim response to the consultation and its parts that in the too hard basket so now the case clearly one of the most controversial issues but we do have models out there so you know Search Engines again on to the right because it got already face Data Protection legislation the prospect of 20000000 euro fines for infringement all 4 percent so its annual global. Yes but so i watering. Rina that is a model which is already across the entirety of the you. There also issues about how which established companies are global on the internet where its let regulation is local and we need to think very carefully about how companies with a partial footprint in the relative jurisdiction here in britain can be received in a proportionate way but i think we are currently looking at at some kind of signing system if the cittie of care is breached systemically were not talking about monitoring every single potential in friendship but Just Companies discharging a change you can to the communities and society at large so and this crime going to give you the last very brief a headache because i do want to ask you then nor does say well the British Government has said that it will protect online users rights by safeguarding free speech promoting new technology and ensuring businesses are not unduly impacted do you have the confidence that theyre going to be able to do that given what theyve already said. Well x. Is now definitely welcomes that actually the government is receptive to the number of concerns that were raised by the Civil Societies it remains to be seen i also dont want to go into the details at the stage and. Create some speculation around how the law will eventually play out nevertheless it is extremely important that there will be clear distinction between illegal content and legal harmful and it is extremely important that the transparency requirements will be clearly stated in whatever regulation is coming our way and also we will keep following the initiative as we do in numerous other countries and we are definitely. Trusting the regulators in getting this right but its also important for regulators to realize that cant any kind of these legislative proposals not only in the u. K. But also in the European Union have to influence beyond the European Union and beyond their National Borders as a regulator as in maybe in the countries which are less democratic and more out to retire and are getting inspired and we see now more and more of these regulatory efforts popping up in various parts of the world hence its extremely important that the legislature get this right and they will put the human rights of online users at 1st place and its a very very fine line to walk there while well continue following this very closely but for now thank you to all of our guests thats david. And mira silva and thank you too for watching you can see the program again any time by visiting our website aljazeera dot com and for further discussion do go to our Facebook Page thats facebook dot com ford slash a. J. Inside story and you can also join the conversation on twitter our handle is at a. J. Inside story for me this dandiya tayo and the entire team here in doha i find out. 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