Facebook, Google ‘turning blind eye,’ says Hunt
$CCORDING TO THE E[CLUSIVE POLLING BY %0* FOR The Independent OF RESPONDENTS EITHER ‘STRONGLY’ SUPPORTED OR ‘SOMEWHAT’ SUPPORTED THE STATEMENT THAT FACEBOOK SHOULD NOW BE FINED BY THE GOVERNMENT OVER THE REVELATIONS
LONDON: In a strongly-worded letter to platforms like Facebook and Google, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has accused companies of “turning a blind eye” to a generation of children who are being “exposed to harmful emotional side effects” of social media usek
Separately, according to a majority of those polled by The Independent, Facebook should be fined by the UK government to punish the technology giant for failing to protect people’s datak
According to the exclusive polling by BMG for The Independent, 60 per cent of respondents either “strongly” supported or “somewhat” supported the statement that Facebook should now be fined by the government over the revelationsk
Hunt warned that the failure of platforms to prevent young children using social media was “unacceptable and irresponsiblek”
He wrote: “In particular, progress on age verification is not good enough. I am concerned that your companies seem content with a situation where thousands of users breach your own terms and conditions on the minimum user agek
“I fear that you are collectively turning a blind eye to a whole generation of children being exposed to the harmful emotional side effects of social media prematurelyk
“This is both morally wrong and deeply unfair to parents who are faced with the invidious choice of allowing children to use platforms they are too young to access, or excluding them from social interaction that often the majority of their peers are engaging ink”
“It is unacceptable and irresponsible for you to put parents in this positionk”
The health secretary questioned whether social media giants had “sufficient will” to introduce solutions.
Hunt stressed that the government does not rule out bringing in new legislation to deal with the situation when it considers options in Mayk
The survey asked: “Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged his company failed to properly to protect people’s data, amid claims details of millions of users were compromisedk To what extent would you support or oppose Facebook being fined in the UK government as a resultk”
Just 10 per cent of those polled opposed sanctioning the company while 21 per cent said neither support or oppose and a further nine per cent replied, “don’t know”. Similar results were reflected across all age groupsk