The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco), through its Director General, Audrey Azoulay, called for a global dialogue to regulate social media companies and limit the spread of false information online.
Speaking from Paris, France to lawmakers, journalists and civil society representatives, they insisted on reaching a global consensus to help make the internet a safe space with verified information.
The two-day conference in the French capital, where the UN agency is based, aims to formulate policies that will help regulators, governments and companies deal with content that undermines democracy and human rights, while supporting freedom of expression and the Encourage access to accurate and reliable information.
The global dialogue that promotes UNESCO It aims to provide the legal tools and principles of accountability for social media companies to contribute to the “common good,” Azoulay said in an interview with the AP.
“This would limit the risks we are seeing and experiencing today, misinformation and conspiracy theories spreading faster than the truth,” he added.
The international conference would result in Unesco presenting global guidelines for governments, regulators and digital businesses in mid-2023.
Last year, the European Union (EU) suffered from a draft law that would force big tech companies like Google and Meta, which owns Facebook, to tighten their platforms’ surveillance to protect users from hate speech, misinformation and harmful content.
The Digital Services Act is one of three major EU regulations targeting the tech industry.
In that matter, the United States Supreme Court this week subpoenaed Google to consider whether it is responsible for the recommendations its algorithms make to its users in a case affecting free speech, and Twitter to determine whether you are responsible for inciting a terrorist attack by improperly removing content posted by organizations associated with this crime.
Both cases relate to Article 230 of the 1996 Decency of Communications Act, which stipulates that an “interactive computer service” cannot be treated as a publisher or publisher of third-party content.
Source: AP.