— 13 min read — The Online Safety Bill has now completed its detailed scrutiny in the House of Lords and we have a new version that we can expect to be very close to its final form. Most of the changes during the Lords process come from the Government adding in extra provisions that…
11 CommentsCategory: content
— 12 min read — There is a lot happening at the moment to focus minds on the subject online content moderation. The EU has a new law coming into force called the Digital Services Act that creates significant new powers for government authorities to tell platforms how to moderate content. The UK is working…
1 Comment— < 1 min read — It has been a while since I added a new post to this blog as I have been focused more on the spoken than the written word recently, recording a podcast most weeks with my friend Nicklas Lundblad. I hope to have time to produce more written articles soon but…
Leave a Comment— 10 min read — Today is the 10th anniversary of the start of massive protests in Egypt that led to the removal of their autocratic leader, Hosni Mubarak. These protests came hot on the heels of demonstrations in Tunisia that had forced their President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power on January 14th…
Leave a Comment— 13 min read — German Chancellor Angela Merkel has attracted a lot of (mostly favourable) attention for criticising the recent removal of Donald Trump’s social media accounts. As it is well known that she has strong political disagreements with the outgoing US President, her comments have been interpreted by some as a powerful argument…
8 Comments— 10 min read — Summary :- I explore the power of platforms to ‘eject’ people from their services following recent decisions about President Trump’s accounts.
Leave a Comment— 14 min read — Summary :- this post describes a model for ‘Harm Reduction Plans’. Platforms would create these documents to explain how they are responding to specific harms. They would be provided to regulators and form part of any new oversight mechanism.
Leave a Comment— 6 min read — If you live in the UK you will likely have been amused by a video produced by the comedian Matt Lucas sending up the Government’s advice on what people need to do in response to Covid-19. The phrase ‘go to work, don’t go to work’ has become a zeitgeist response…
1 Comment— 7 min read — Summary :- there is increasing political interest in the UK in legislation to tackle anti-vax content online.
We need to invest time in understanding types of anti-vax content and how this could be treated before rushing into creating new enforcement mechanisms.