An MP in the UK is introducing a bill in parliament aimed to educate people to be more resilient and better able to spot fake news and recognise hate. At the same time it should aim but to ensure there are much stronger protections to spread decency and police our online communities.
Lucy Powell is the Labour and Co-operative MP for Manchester Central who is piloting this and wrote the following in The Guardian.
Social media has given extremists a new tool with which to recruit and radicalise. It is something we are frighteningly unequipped to deal with.
Day-in day-out, whatever side of an argument we are on, we see the pervasive impact of abuse and hate online – and increasingly offline, too.
Worryingly, it is on Facebook, which most in Britain use, where people are being exposed to extremist material. Instead of small meetings in pubs or obscure websites in the darkest corners of the internet, our favourite social media site is increasingly where hate is cultivated.
Online echo chambers are normalising and allowing extremist views to go viral unchallenged. These views are spread as the cheap thrill of racking up Facebook likes drives behaviour and reinforces a binary worldview. Some people are being groomed unwittingly as unacceptable language is treated as the norm. Others have a more sinister motive.
While in the real world, alternative views would be challenged by voices of decency in the classroom, staffroom, or around the dining-room table, there are no societal norms in the dark crevices of the online world.
Despite having the resources to solve the problem, Facebook lacks the will. In fact, at times it actively obstructs those who wish to tackle hate and disinformation.
The responsibility to regulate these social media platforms falls on the government. It is past time to act. That’s why I am which will do just that. By establishing legal accountability for what’s published in large online forums, I believe we can force those who run these echo chambers to stamp out the evil that is currently so prominent. Social media can be a fantastic way of bringing people together – which is precisely why we need to prevent it being hijacked by those who instead wish to divide.
The Guardian
