Tag: Social Media Regulation

  • Twitter receives record number of govt requests to remove content, including India’s

    Twitter receives record number of govt requests to remove content, including India’s

    Twitter has revealed that a record number of requests have been made from several governments around the world to remove content from the social media platform between January and June 2021.

    According to the platform, 95 per cent of the demands came from five countries which include Japan, Russia, Turkey, India and South Korea.

    The company said that in July 2021, it had seen a surge in government demands to take down content posted by journalists and news outlets.

    In a report, they said that 43,387 legal demands for the removal of content from 196,878 accounts were made in the six months. It is the largest number of such requests in a reporting period since Twitter started releasing its transparency reports in 2012.

    Sinead McSweeney, Twitter’s vice president of global public policy and philanthropy, said, “We’re facing unprecedented challenges as governments around the world increasingly attempt to intervene and remove content. This threat to privacy and freedom of expression is a deeply worrying trend that requires our full attention.”

    Previously, Twitter faced high-profile tussles with governments from India to Nigeria over content moderation and regulation.

  • PM talks about rumours that govt wants to ban social media

    PM talks about rumours that govt wants to ban social media

    Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan, who is known for having social media as his primary source of information, has said the government will not impose a ban on any social media application.

    “But at the same time, we also can’t let anyone insult or spread false information about government organisations or the people working for them,” the premier pointed out in a statement.

    PM Imran also took notice of the delay in the preparation of social media regulations by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) and Ministry of Information Technology.

    He instructed the departments to present a report regarding it within this week.

    The PTI government has been criticised for its decisions regarding monitoring and regulating content on social media. This came after the government placed a temporary ban on popular online game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) and issued a warning to TikTok.

    The premier had in February also said that new rules were being introduced only to protect citizens and regulate social media in the country, which had come days after the PTI government led by him decided to impose restrictions in the name of citizens’ protection and national interest.

    Presiding over a meeting to review the social media rules, PM Imran had said that the new rules were not prepared to curb freedom of expression or victimise political opponents. He had claimed that the United Kingdom (UK), Singapore and other countries were also introducing such laws to protect their citizens.

    However, no action for the implementation of the proposed rules had followed.

  • Citizen Protection Rules 2020 suspended

    Citizen Protection Rules 2020 suspended

    Citizens Protection (Against Online Harm) Rules 2020 suspended when more than 100 rights organisations and individuals boycott consultation with government, DAWN reported.

    The right groups in a statement said that the government had refused to elaborate on the legal status of the rules, so “any consultation is merely token to deflect criticism and not a genuine exercise to seek input.”

    According to the report, when Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Chairman Amir Azeem Bajwa was approached to seek clarification, he said: “The rules are expected to be improved/amended suitably at the end of the consultation process. Implementation of [existing] rules has been suspended.”

    This Monday, the PTA chairman-led committee that the IT minister formed following the premier’s instruction from consultation with stakeholders. Additional Secretary of IT Eazaz Aslam Dar, Digital Pakistan head Tania Aidrus and the focal person on digital media Dr Arslan Khalid are committee members.

    On the contrary, the Federal Minister for human rights Dr shireen Mazari and barrister Ali Zafar are also expected to be a part of the process.

    According to the press release of PTA, the committee decides to initiate an open consultation with all stakeholders including civil society, human and digital rights groups.

    PTA further added that a questionnaire seeking input from all stakeholders shall be posted on its official website.

    PM’s focal person on digital media Arslan Khalid said all proceedings would be “inclusive” and done in a “transparent” manner. “The rules have not been implemented. Prime Minis­ter Imran Khan has clearly instructed for robust and broad-based consultations before any rules can be put into place,” he told Dawn.

  • Facebook CEO shares views on social media regulations

    Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Facebook, has said that the social media giant is working to counter online election interferences, Business Recorder reported.

    According to reports, Mark, while speaking at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, said that so far there were no well-defined rules to regulate social media, however, the subject had been brought to debate for privacy and security reasons.

    Read more: WhatsApp reaches 2 billion users

    In his opinion, social media should be regulated with a system somewhere between the existing rules used for telecommunication and media industries.

    “Right now there are two frameworks that I think people have for existing industries – there’s like newspapers and existing media, and then there are the telecommunication type models, which is ‘the data just flows through you’, but you’re not going to hold a telecom responsible if someone says something harmful on a phone line.”

    Read more: PTI’s new social media laws: Are you in some sort of danger?

    “I actually think where we should be is somewhere in between,” he said.

    Facebook and social media giants including Twitter and Alphabet’s Google have come under increasing pressure to better combat governments and political groups using their platforms to spread false and misleading information.

    Read more: The inconvenient truth about Pakistan’s economy

    Mark maintained he had employed 35,000 people to review online content and implement security measures to counter fake news and privacy protection.