Officers calling for social media regulation

BUFFALO (AP/WBEN) – Just a few weeks ago, the Chief of the United Nations called for more regulation of social media companies.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he believes it shouldn’t be a company that has the power to decide whether, for example, then president Donald Trump’s Twitter account should be closed, as a questioner asked.

Rather, he said, a “mechanism” should be created “in which there is a regulatory framework with rules that allow for that to be done in line with law.”

“There’s no business I know of in America that can’t be sued for their actions and not be subject to regulations by the government at any level except for big tech,” said South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham in an interview with Fox news.

Graham, like many conservatives, has been calling out social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter for “censoring content,” and there are some Republicans who feel the censorship is targeted toward their messages. Back in January, Twitter ended Trump’s nearly 12-year run and shuttered his account, severing an instant line of communication to his 89 million followers that was a hallmark of his presidency. Facebook and Instagram also suspended Trump.

OUCH: @Twitter just announced Trump’s ban will continue even if he wants to run for President again.

— Grant Stern (@grantstern) February 10, 2021

Tom King, president of the NYS Rifle & Pistol Association, wrote the following to members:
“Fellow Gun Owners,
The NYSRPA is happy to announce a new email alert list that will bring you the latest information regarding your Second Amendment rights as well as any other pertinent information of interest to our community.
The email alert system has evolved out of necessity. The social media giants who control the platforms familiar to all of us have chosen to declare that my Facebook page as well as Carl Gottstein’s does not conform to their community standards; therefore they de- platformed both of us. More importantly this loss of our personal accounts makes it impossible for either of us to post on the NYSRPA Facebook page, essentially muzzling our voices of reason during these turbulent time.”

Guterres said he is “particularly worried” about the power of social media companies.

He pointed to “the volume of information that is being gathered about each one of us, the lack of control we have about … the data related to ourselves, the fact that that data can be used not only for commercial purposes to sell to advertising companies … but also to change our behavior, and the risks of that to be used also from a political point of view for the control of citizens in countries.”

Legal analyst Paul Cambria explained why social media companies have such latitude, at least in the United States.

“The First Amendment does not protect citizens from private companies and what they do,” said Cambria. “If the government owned Twitter, for example, then they could not censor communications based on their content, but since Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and the rest of them are privately owned, they can set up their own terms of service, and they can basically block anyone for anything.”

Cambria said the federal government could pass legislation to regulate these companies like it has done with other industries.

“These companies have become so ingrained in the movement of information, commerce, and the rest of it, that the federal government is justified constitutionally in regulating it them and setting up certain rules that they have to follow – that hasn’t happened yet,” Cambria continued. “There’s a movement in Europe to do so with companies like that, and there have obviously been discussions here among legislators about doing that, but until that happens, they basically can say, ‘Here are our terms of service.'”

Guterres said this “requires a serious discussion” and that is one of the objectives of his “Roadmap for Digital Cooperation” launched last June.

The roadmap’s aim is to promote “a safer, more equitable digital world.”

It calls for action in eight areas including achieving universal connectivity to the Internet by 2030, “promoting trust and security in the digital environment” and “building a more effective architecture for digital cooperation,”

“Digital technology issues are too often low on political agendas,” it says.

Among the roadmap’s provisions is a call for strengthening the Internet Governance Forum, which bring people from various groups in the public and private sector together to discuss public policy issues related to the Internet, “in order to make it more responsive and relevant to current digital issues.”

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