Thread - Professor Lorna Woods @EssexLawSchool and I set out to describe a system for reducing harm from/on social media for UK users. We sought to balance harm reduction with free speech (which, in Europe is qualified). This thread links our first draft blog posts together
2. We believe that society can rein in the harm on/from social media, harm that contaminates what should be a great force for good. We wrote about that in this blog post @CarnegieUKTrust carnegieuktrust.org.uk/blog/social-me…
3. We then sketched out our very early thoughts on how a regime could work carnegieuktrust.org.uk/blog/social-me…
4. In Europe (at least) there is lots of effective regulation, outside the digital/media sphere that limits harm to people – we did a survey of that as found in the UK carnegieuktrust.org.uk/blog/harm-redu…
5. We kept coming back to a duty of care on the largest social media service providers to their users – we discussed that in non technical terms. carnegieuktrust.org.uk/blog/reducing-…
6. To balance regulation and free speech we should only regulate the largest/most harmful platforms and exclude other media with its own rules – we set out how to choose and which they are in this post carnegieuktrust.org.uk/blog/social-me…
7. We thought through how a regulator would work on a risk-managed basis – in particular creating with the companies, users,victims and civil society a perpetual, transparent cycle of harm reduction carnegieuktrust.org.uk/blog/social-me…
8. Finally we turned to who would regulate the regime we have described – we survey the regulatory landscape and conclude OFCOM, funded by a share of the internet revenue tax. Much quicker and cheaper than setting up a new one. carnegieuktrust.org.uk/blog/regulate-…
9. It’s a draft, we welcome comment and will produce a final version as a white paper in the future. We should stress that balancing the competing tensions in this proposal is tricky, if you can do that better, please let us know!
Blog publishing in bits over months was awkward in some ways but enabled us to get ideas out there for helpful comment as we went along. If you’d like to chat, get in touch. Thanks to @DW_CarnegieUK and @Anna_CarnegieUK for their help. We have done this work pro bono.
As I review this thread I can only apologise for the endless headshots of me that loom in a surreal fashion from the links to blog posts. This might in itself be harmful for some, will see if we can swap for kittens. [ENDS]
