Call out for nine countries to regulate big social media

OTTAWA— Politicians from nine nations have banded together to call on their countries to regulate social media giants like Facebook to curb the spread of disinformation campaigns and hate speech.

In a joint statement released Tuesday, politicians meeting in London for an “International Grand Committee” on disinformation and “fake news” said countries should bring in rules requiring social media companies to take action on “harmful and misleading content.”

“Representative democracy is too important and too hard-won to be left undefended from online harms, in particular aggressive campaigns of disinformation launched from one country against citizens of another,” the statement read.

“Social media companies should be held liable if they fail to comply with … (an) order to remove harmful and misleading content from their platforms, and should be regulated to ensure they comply with this requirement.”

The largely unprecedented statement was signed by politicians from nine countries including Canada and close allies the United Kingdom and France, but also Belgium, Ireland, Brazil, Argentina, Latvia and Singapore.

Together, the countries have been frustrated in their efforts to force Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify in the wake of the company’s Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Bob Zimmer, the Conservative MP whose ethics and privacy committee has been leading the Canadian investigation into that scandal (and politics in the age of social media, more generally), said preventing misinformation and hate campaigns is crucial now that social media has become “the public square.”

“We want to deal with the bullies who influence that public square,” Zimmer said in a phone interview from London. “What we need Facebook to do is do a better job of policing those bullies.”