Comment Why internet giants need policing

You can’t pick up a newspaper at the moment without reading of the latest problems caused by social media platforms such as Facebook and Google.

Whether it is fake news, not paying taxes, data privacy issues or hosting harmful content on their platforms – unbelievably there is no authority that is responsible for monitoring the harm they cause or penalize them for causing it.

Any business that influences the lives of billions of people should be watched closely.

At the moment the only people who watch over Google and Facebook work for Google and Facebook.

They continue to be allowed to mark their own homework – should we really be that surprised when they tell us they’re getting good grades? This has to change.

A new independent regulator could monitor these companies, ask them the difficult questions and penalize them if they refuse to co-operate.

Other businesses and selfemployed people live by similar rules, so why should businesses worth hundreds of billions of dollars be treated any differently? If anything, close regulation is even more important with internet companies where one in three users are children.

We have already waited for too long and seen far too much damage caused.

It is time to stop accepting the tech giants’ small reactive steps as victories and take the leap forward we need.

If we really want the internet to be a safer place, then we need an independent regulator who would be able to identify where harm is caused and take meaningful action to stop it happening again.