Dr David Erdos took part in Al Jazeera Inside Story this week which looked at the future regulation of social media. This is becoming a key question internationally as witnessed by legislation in Australia and Germany, as well as policy initiatives in many other countries and the EU. The topic rose to particular prominence this week as a result of the UK Government’s announcement that it intends to grant Ofcom, the UK’s telecommunications authority, new powers to enforce a 'duty of care' on social media companies to more effectively tackle illegal content uploaded by users and to ensure transparency and consistency in the management of their own terms and conditions.
Inside Story focused on this important development and David spoke on the general rationale for this 'duty of care' approach, the challenges in safeguarding freedom of expression, the role of Artificial Intelligence and the appropriate rules for this, the interface with data protection including the 'right to be forgotten' and the way the framework might be enforced. Other participants on the programme were Eliska Pirkova, Europe Policy Analyst for Access Now and Meera Selva who is Director of the Journalism Fellowship Programme at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in Oxford.
The entire programme is available to watch online.