Commentary

Self-Regulation Is Over For Tech Giants

There is only one story in town today. The Home Secretary and Culture Secretary have unveiled their highly anticipated white paper for internet regulation. The move could be summed up by the latter's warning in The Telegraph that "the era of self-regulation is over" and "new duty of care laws will finally make tech giants accountable."

Once the headline is read and the the bottom of the article is reached, the tone is a little more conciliatory. As the BBC separately points out, the main thrust is to form an independent regulator which can devise a code of practice, in consultation with the industry. The goal is for platforms to be fined if they allow harmful material to remain online too long and to even consider fining individual executives and blocking sites from operating in the country. 

Jeremy Wright, the Culture Secretary, went on the record this morning on BBC news suggesting that the fines should be in the same league as GDPR, which offers a maximum of 4% of a company's global revenues for the most severe transgressions. 

The devil will now be in the details of what the new code of practice will look like, how it will be drawn up, and who will oversee it. The rumours are that Ofcom, the broadcast regulator, will be asked to play an initial role before a body is launched either within its own walls, or spun out. 

Judging from the many column inches of debate that have preceded this, fines will not be instant. The trick will be deciding where the grey line between extreme views and hate speech comes in, and where content ceases to be ill-informed and borders on encouraging people to do themselves harm. The next trick will be how long it will be between content being flagged and it needing to be removed.

These are tough questions, and it's clear the Government is set on a conciliatory approach initially with naming and shaming of companies that fail to act in time as well as a transparency report required from the tech giants in which they must mention incidents themselves.

The banning of sites and fining of individual executives, I suspect, is very much the iron fist that is going to be left in the background.

The tech giants were warned this was coming, and yet it was only a few days ago that Mark Zuckerberg agreed regulation was required.

The platforms have been given an opportunity to engage in the process today and to accept they need to remove harmful material when flagged up, and do all they can to stop if being posted in the first place. If they don't, the iron fist is in the background. This is happening whether or not the tech platforms play a full part.

I suspect they will because it makes the most sense. How long can harmful material be flagged up for before it needs to be taken down and how will the regulator be funded? Those are the two main questions now. The end of self-regulation is already a given. 

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