Loadsamoney: UK mulls fining Facebook, Twitter, Google for not washing away filth, terror vids

An influential panel of UK MPs have proposed fining the likes of Facebook, Google and Twitter if they fail to remove illegal content within a certain timeframe. Parliament's Home Affairs Committee published a report on Monday that was highly critical of the US tech giants for failing to take down content such as terrorist or …

[bazza]

You're missing the point. This is the politicians saying that policing must happen, and if a social networking company isn't going to do it effectively then there will be consequences for them.

I know that even in New Zealand there's a general acceptance that policing is, unfortunately, necessary.

It's up to the website operators to comply with the law. So far they've been hiding behind the old "we're not the publisher" argument, to limit the set of laws they have to comply with. That might be a cast iron strategy in the US, but is looking increasingly untenable elsewhere.

Regarding your numbers, yes the challenge is large. However that in part is due to the fact that the amount of dodgy material that there users post is also quite large. It's because YouTube, Facebook and Twatter have no real idea who their users really are. Turns out that user anonymity is a bad idea. There's no real consequences for anyone posting dodgy material. Account locked? Just create another, for free. There's nothing to deter that % of society that wants to exploit the networks. It's really hard to go from an IP address to a user identity good enough to bring a prosecution, so currently it happens in only the most extreme cases.

If the social networks want to limit the scale of policing their content, they need their users to be more afraid of posting crap in the first place. That means having a solid i.d for users. That means a more restrictive sign up process involving something substantive like a verified credit card transaction and having all the mechanisms required to deal with credit card fraud. And they need to keep re-verifying i.d. Of course, they'd then have to be much more careful with what they do to exploit people's data...

Will it destroy social network websites? Who knows, and frankly, who cares?

[Kiwi]

You're missing the point. This is the politicians saying that policing must happen, and if a social networking company isn't going to do it effectively then there will be consequences for them.

Not at all, but you might want to check your targeting systems yourself. If FB is forced to police or close, then the people who produce the material that is illegal in some jurisdictions will move elsewhere - in fact I'll bet that most of them are elsewhere already. FB might die, but the material will still be posted. People have been doing this for thousands of years before there was any "internet", even internationally. Of course, the likes of Franklin (hope I've got my history right) were seen as national heroes for doing what many governments are getting in a huff about today (including to some degree the US, go figure...)

I know that even in New Zealand there's a general acceptance that policing is, unfortunately, necessary.

Yup, we now have the"Harmful digitial communications act" (not sure if that means an act about "harmful digital communications" or an act that is harmful to digital communications - the political bloggers it's being used against might see it as the latter). This is an act that means FB et al have to remove any "harmful" material from their sites when notified by a body tasked with checking the complaint first and deciding if the material falls within the intention of the act or not. No notification means no need to act, but if said post falls outside their own T&Cs and they discover it they're free to do with according to their T&C.

Yes, we're well familiar with these things here and are going through the pain of dealing with it or rather laws about it. Though some people might be able to use it for enjoyment rather than pain (I think a number of items on the National website might fall foul of the act for a start, I should start writing about how it offends me to read that stuff....)

RE Annonymity : FB has a "real name" policy. When I last signed up to a gmail account I had to use a cellphone or landline number, and had to get a code via that number (SMS or voice call) to enable the account. There was no option NOT to use that code, either I got the code from a phone or I didn't use gmail. There are still ways around this of course but they're getting harder to use. FB will follow in time. I don't know about YT because I don't use it.