The Business of Fashion
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Facebook, Twitter and TikTok face fines of up to 10 percent of turnover if they fail to remove and limit the spread of illegal content under laws proposed by Britain on Tuesday.
Tech platforms will also need to do more to protect children from being exposed to grooming, bullying and pornography, the government said, to ensure the safety of children online.
“We are entering a new age of accountability for tech to protect children and vulnerable users, to restore trust in this industry, and to enshrine in law safeguards for free speech,” Britain’s Digital Secretary Oliver Dowden said.
Governments globally are wrestling over measures to better control illegal or dangerous content on social media, with the European Union set to unveil its own package on Tuesday.
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Britain’s new rules, which will be introduced in legislation next year, could lead to sites which break the rules being blocked and senior managers held liable for content.
Popular platforms will be required to have clear policies for content that, while not illegal, could cause harm such as disseminating misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines.
Dowden said the framework would give large digital businesses “robust rules” to follow.
Facebook and Google said in February they would work with the government on the regulations. Both companies said they took safety extremely seriously and they had already changed their policies and operations to better tackle the issue.
British media regulator Ofcom will be given the power to fine companies up to £18 million ($24 million) or 10 percent of global turnover, whichever is higher, for breaking the rules.
It will also be able to block non-compliant services from being accessed in Britain.
Online journalism and reader comments on news publishers’ websites will be exempt to safeguard freedom of expression.
By Paul Sandle; editor: Alexander Smith.
The nature of livestream transactions makes it hard to identify and weed out counterfeits and fakes despite growth of new technologies aimed at detecting infringement.
The extraordinary expectations placed on the technology have set it up for the inevitable comedown. But that’s when the real work of seeing whether it can be truly transformative begins.
Successful social media acquisitions require keeping both talent and technology in place. Neither is likely to happen in a deal for the Chinese app, writes Dave Lee.
TikTok’s first time sponsoring the glitzy event comes just as the US effectively deemed the company a national security threat under its current ownership, raising complications for Condé Nast and the gala’s other organisers.