A panel of British lawmakers has said that technology firms such as Facebook should be made liable for “harmful and misleading” material on their websites, Reuters reported on Saturday. Such websites should be made to pay a tax to fund their regulation and awareness campaigns, said the parliamentary committee.
“Companies like Facebook made it easy for developers to scrape user data and to deploy it in other campaigns without their knowledge or consent,” Damian Collins, chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, said. “They must be made responsible, and liable, for the way in which harmful and misleading content is shared on their sites.”
The committee was investigating the impact of technology companies and fake news in the country. It was scheduled to publish its interim report on July 29 but a copy was leaked online on Friday by the director of the pro-Brexit campaign – he has called the report itself “fake news”.
The United Kingdom faces a “democratic crisis” as voters are being targeted with “pernicious views” and data is being manipulated, the BBC quoted the report as saying. “Our democracy is at risk and now is the time to act,” the report said, pointing out the “relentless targeting of hyper-partisan views, which play to the fears and prejudices” of voters.
The report also suggested changes in electoral law to “reflect changes in campaigning techniques”. One of the ideas was to create a “public register for political advertising” so that messages being distributed can be accessed publicly.
The report said technology companies should pay taxes to fund digital literacy, which it called “the fourth pillar of education, alongside reading, writing and maths”.
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