Tech firms should be made liable for 'fake news' on sites: UK lawmakers
Tech firms should be made liable for 'fake news' on
sites: UK lawmakers
By Alistair Smout July 28, 2018
LONDON (Reuters) - Tech firms like Facebook should be
made liable for "harmful and misleading" material on their websites
and pay a levy so they can be regulated, British lawmakers said, warning of a
crisis in democracy due to misuse of personal data.
Facebook has increasingly become a focus of the media
committee's inquiry into "fake news" after the data of 87 million
users was improperly accessed by British-headquartered consultancy Cambridge
Analytica.
Facebook executives said on Wednesday its profit margins
would plummet for several years due to the cost of improving privacy safeguards
and slowing usage in its top advertising markets. The news wiped over $120
billion off the company's share price.
At the same time, the company is coming under concerted
regulatory scrutiny in Britain, the United States and the European Union.
"Companies like Facebook made it easy for developers
to scrape user data and to deploy it in other campaigns without their knowledge
or consent," Damian Collins, chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and
Sport Committee, said in a statement officially released on Sunday.
"They must be made responsible, and liable, for the
way in which harmful and misleading content is shared on their sites."
The report was first published online late on Friday by
Dominic Cummings, who ran the officially designated Vote Leave campaign in the
EU referendum.
The standards of accuracy and impartiality which tech
companies are held to could be based on regulator Ofcom's rules for television
and radio, the lawmakers said.
British broadcasters, whether publicly or privately
owned, must generally stick to strict rules on political balance and factual
accuracy, overseen by a regulator.
TechUK, a trade association for technology firms
operating in Britain said it would be challenging to hold them to a higher
standard than the country's newspapers or politicians.
"Sometimes decisions about what is and isn't 'fake'
will be highly political and contentious," techUK's deputy director,
Antony Walker, said.
"Determining what is and is not accurate information
is not always straightforward and both traditional media and elected
politicians can often be sources of news that is inaccurate or untrue," he
added.
The committee's report also suggested a levy on tech firms
which could contribute to an increased budget for Britain's data regulator, the
Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), in the way in which the banking sector
pays for the upkeep of its watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority.
The ICO earlier this month fined Facebook for the
Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Tom Watson, deputy leader of Britain's opposition Labour
Party, said the government had previously rejected its efforts to give the ICO
greater investigation powers and improve disclosure of how online political
adverts are funded.
Cambridge Analytica, which was hired by Donald Trump's
campaign in 2016, has denied its work on the U.S. president's election made use
of the data in question.
It has also said that while it pitched for work with
campaign group Leave.EU before the Brexit referendum in Britain in 2016, it did
not end up doing any work on the campaign.
The committee however said that adverts used online in
the campaign were not clearly labeled, and expressed concern about a breach of
spending rules by rival campaign group Vote Leave.
"We are facing nothing less than a crisis in our
democracy – based on the systematic manipulation of data to support the
relentless targeting of citizens ... by campaigns of disinformation and
messages of hate," Collins said.
The findings were made in an interim report, with the
full report due in the autumn.
(Additional reporting by David Milliken; Editing by
Stephen Addison, Guy Faulconbridge and Matthew Mpoke Bigg)
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