Facebook Whistleblower Says New EU Tech Rules Could Be Global Standard

Europe’s draft guidelines requiring tech corporations to do extra to deal with unlawful on-line content material might grow to be a world gold customary for a safer on-line world if they’re beefed up, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen instructed EU lawmakers on Monday.

Haugen, a former Facebook worker who labored as a product supervisor on the corporate’s civic misinformation crew, has accused the social media large of repeatedly prioritising revenue over clamping down on hate speech and misinformation.

Her testimony to a European Parliament committee comes after stops in London, Lisbon, and Berlin, and at a time when EU lawmakers are debating whether or not to agency up the Digital Services Act (DSA) proposed by EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager.

“The Digital Services Act that is now before this Parliament has the potential to be a global gold standard,” Haugen stated.

“It can inspire other countries, including my own, to pursue new rules that would safeguard our democracies but the law has to be strong and its enforcement firm. Otherwise, we will lose this once in a generation opportunity to align the future of technology and democracy,” she instructed EU lawmakers.

Haugen stated the DSA needs to be expanded to incorporate on-line content material that violates a platform’s phrases and circumstances, and will drive platforms to take accountability for dangers past the unfold of unlawful content material resembling election manipulation and disinformation in regards to the harms of psychological well being.

Haugen stated information media content material shouldn’t be excluded from the foundations as a result of disinformation campaigns might nonetheless recreation the system by exploiting digital platforms utilized by publishers.

In a weblog put up forward of the EU listening to, Facebook rejected Haugen’s claims that it prioritises income over consumer security.

“Contrary to recent claims about our company, we’ve always had the commercial incentive to remove harmful content from our platform,” Monika Bickert, vp of content material coverage, wrote within the weblog.

She stated Facebook would spend greater than $5 billion (roughly Rs. 37,020 crore) this 12 months on security and safety.

EU business chief Thierry Breton, who met Haugen earlier on Monday, criticised the elevated lobbying by know-how corporations over the draft guidelines and urged lawmakers preventing over the scope of the DSA to step up their deliberations.

“Speed is everything. We need the DSA/DMA package adopted in the first half of 2022,” he stated after the assembly.

The DMA, or Digital Markets Act, is the EU’s different deliberate landmark laws which units out the do’s and don’ts for world know-how corporations.

© Thomson Reuters 2021