Youths Tell of Worrying Social Media Trends
They are concerned that pornography, fake news and violence shared on social media here have gone from bad to worse.
Agroup of six concerned youths recommend that social media group administrators and owners should also be held accountable for posts allowed on the group. The youths made an informative submission yesterday on the Online Safety Bill to the Standing Committee for Justice, Law and Human Rights.
In his submission, Damien Whippy gave an example of a Facebook group in which the administrators were SODELPA party leader Sitiveni Rabuka, and provisional candidate Lynda Tabuya.
He said the group contained posts where individuals were offering to share porn videos to other members through their inbox. Mr Whippy said posts on such groups had to be approved by the administrators before they were allowed online. As a concerned citizen Mr Whippy said they could not lobby them because they did not have any powers to do so.
“We are digital citizens and we are living in this online landscape. At least 440,000 Fijians interact online by posting, messaging, and communicating,” Mr Whippy said.
“We have seen that the trends have gone from bad to worse.”
He said children have been desensitised to sex and violence because such content was easily available online for them to see.
“Societal problems are often spread through social groups through assimilation and interaction with individuals promoting negative viewpoints in the society,” he said.
Mr Whippy also gave an example of how false information spread like wildfire on social media platforms. He made reference to a false video which was shared online by former Member of Parliament, Mosese Bulitavu.
“Prominent politician, Mosese Bulitavu, knowingly spread a false video of our honourable prime minister,” Mr Whippy said. “He knew that it was fake and anybody with intelligence would know that the video was cut. That is a scary thing because it is a direct lie, but it was spread.”
He said they tracked that particular post and within 19 hours 26,667 Fijians, “were deliberately misled by the premeditated action.”
“Just one simple thought and action caused thousands of people to say negative things and there was a lot of misguided public and online backlash against the PM.
“No medium has that power except for social media.” The group also pointed out that the internet penetration rate was 0.6 per cent of the population in 1998 under the Sitiveni Rabuka government, it was 1.6 per cent under the 1999 Mahendra Chaudhry government, 9.6 per cent under the Laisenia Qarase government, and currently under the Voreqe Bainimarama Government, it was 46.5 per cent in 2016. The group also suggested that the Bill consider sexual grooming as a serious offence.
They also stated that our National Development Plan aimed to provide 99.9per cent internet coverage to all Fijians by 2030.
We are digital citizens and we are living in this online landscape. Damien Whippy Concerned youth