Funny they put so much effort in a case affecting an individual, but will do nothing about rampant scams being pushed to unsuspecting users 24/7 that are in the grand scheme of things much more damaging.

That's true, but here was a specific chance to hold the social media companies to account in front of a victim who happens to be a parliamentarian, in front of the entirety of parliament, in a setting where their usual course of just flat out lying would land them in front of court.

If nothing else, it might just wake up the rest of the Nonces in Parliament, that they could be next and that the Social Media firms will not do a thing to help them. So maybe they will act. And in protecting themselves, they might just end up protecting the rest of the users.

Getting such a message to finally penetrate the thick skulls of parliamentarians is no easy job after all...

Time to hold these companies financially accountable just like "regular" companies. LA was a good start.

Funny they put so much effort in a case affecting an individual, but will do nothing about rampant scams being pushed to unsuspecting users 24/7 that are in the grand scheme of things much more damaging.

True... but.

In terms of demonstrating harms in any meaningful way (e.g. in court), it's not enough to wave vaguely at a lot of stuff and say "bad". Not if it comes to judicial rulings or anything with teeth. You often need to get into the specifics of a single case to test the subtance of the allegations - which may then set a useful precedent for other cases or allow other cases to be expedited and bundled in on a "yep, same category" having checked the prima facie details.

It's why class action or large cases sometimes focus on a John Doe as the test case.

In this case, asking about misinformation in vague terms will garner a similarly vague response of "we have systems to minimise it", whereas being able to say "Why didn't you kill these defamatory deepfakes of this person who is sat in this room staring at you?" really lets them needle the respondents and demand specific answers and get into the nitty gritty on a meaningful basis.

It's also why yesterday's ruling against Meta/YouTube in LA is so foundational - it's a major precedent that could affect hundreds of other ongoing cases.

"My instinct is to pass a very simple law that somebody's identity belongs to them and cannot be stolen, used, misappropriated, whatever the purpose… You should go to bed a night not fearing that in the morning, you find a deeply damaging, disruptive and dangerous misrepresentation of you."

Since this is UK, the US First Amendment doesn't apply. Does this mean saying goodbye to any impersonation, even Auto-Vox, for comedy purposes? Maybe there needs to be a carve-out to protect a certain level of speech.

Deepfakes that are crafted to pass off as serious would (and should) definitely be illegal. I wish all public lies were illegal, not just when under oath.

We're here because Big Tech made a technology which spewed out images and videos but no way of identifying them as such - any watermarking they added as an afterthought was easily removed.

If it sounds familiar it's just like how they set up social media empires completely unsuitable for children but with no effective parental controls, and now we're all in this age verification hell where governments have to mop up after the fact but because they aren't in the technology business and don't know how to legislate for it, we've ended up with people's ID being uploaded everywhere and then leaked or used as more data for the advertising industrial complex.

Their modus operandi is to keep pushing until they break yet another part of society. It's called disruption.

Since this is UK, the US First Amendment doesn't apply. Does this mean saying goodbye to any impersonation, even Auto-Vox, for comedy purposes? Maybe there needs to be a carve-out to protect a certain level of speech.

People already have a right to their likeness, which is why commercial photographers get model releases, specifying what the images will be used for and any limitations. These rights are generally focused around commercial exploitation of the image or likeness, so do not preclude a "fair use" defence for purposes of journalism or things like satire (Thatcher is hardly likely to have signed a model release allowing Spitting Image to use her likeness).

We also have libel and slander law where stating things that are untrue about a person (or republishing such) may be an offence. Although in this case, the social firms may get off under the "Innocent Dissemination" defence offered to operators of websites in the Defamation Act 2013.

It's not a big step to look at an "impersonation" offence, which doesn't include satire or similar "fair comment", but basically bulks out libel law to explicitly include an attempt to deceive, perhaps tightening regulation on websites to say it's not enough to add community notes - they really have to take stuff down.

They sell their users eyeballs to advertisers, so what they need is their users engagement. Keep them scrolling, keep them online, consuming one post after another.

Emotions create engagement.

Negative emotions create more engagement than positive emotions.

Negative emotions are also more easy to create at scale.

Furious users are the most engaged.

How do you create furious users? Promote the most controversial messages or the barely legal verbal attacks or images. Tell them lie after lie after lie about each other.

In short :

I guess it's nothing personal or political in the end, but causing mayhem in politics and society is just a very effective means to maximize profits for the operators of social networks.

Is there anything real on Reels? I doubt it.

True, but a strong emotional reaction will in nearly all cases override the more rational "hey, is this real?"- impulse.

That base mechanism has a pretty dangerous mob-forming potential.

Very simple laws + lack of tech knowledge may mean Unintended Consequences.

Well that's alright then. Specifically esigned to mislead and confuse, no societal benefit possible, but still goes in front of 10 - 20% of the number of users it would if it were accurate.

How well would a newspaper get on if it flat out made shit up and put it into 1 in 10 print impressions? Yeah ok, I'll get my coat...

I hate this version of the future.

I was about to make this exact point

The obvious answer is to make them publishers. The internet is no longer tiny, and desperately in need of legal protection. So we just make all the big players publishers, in any case where they have promoted content, pushed it into users' feeds or put it on the front page.

We can't make them responsible for all posted content. But we could force them to give proper reporting tools, and then make them legally liable for anything they then choose to leave up. Obviously this then gives companies the chance to destroy all negative reviews, by spurious legal claims. But then if Youtube want to destroy their own business model by banning everything on first complaint - that's up to them. Someone else can replace them. You could also have a rule for persistent reporters, that a company can legally punish them for crying wolf - by ignoring/downgrading future complaints.

So if I post something libellous - then that's on me. If someone complains, then the company will have to decide whether to nuke the post, or leave it up. If they leave it up, they're jointly liable, with me.

However, if I post something libellous,and they put it into their general news feed (for clicks), then they are acting as my publisher, so are jointly liable with me from the start.

They should have an easier legal test to pass. It shouldn't be their job to do deep research on what I say, they should only have to take reasonable steps to make sure it's not obviously illegal or libellous. the more effort they spend promoting it, the more checking they should have to do.

I don't know if the publishing thing should count for followers though. If people have actively chosen to "follow" my posts, I'm not sure if that should count as publishing. I think the responsibility should remain with the poster. Though, if the poster regularly posts illegal/libellous content, then maybe you could argue the company become jointly liable again.

This would harm the platforms and change useful public service content - but I'd argue that Facebook and Google make massive profits - and can afford to clean up some of their messes.

I also think this should be extended to adverts. Most internet companies (and here I include The Register itself) seem to take the attitude of we just get ads from our partners - we know nothing. In general the El Reg ones we've complained about have been video ones, or ones that expand to cover the whole screen, or bring the browser to its knees. But maybe 20% of the ads you see on YouTube are obvious fraud. Similarly, when I had a Facebook account, maybe half the ads in the sidebar were for you've won an iPad/car/house as the millionth user to be shown this ad. I guess I didn't get the well-paying advertisers, as I'd given them too little personal data. Some scams are unavoidable. But many are fucking obvious frauds, if these companies gave a fuck about their users, and didn't just take the ads automatically. So we could make them manually check them, or suffer the consequences, as with TV, or we could force advert reporting tools on them - every ad must have a report obvious scam/fraud/illegality button with. Again with penalties for users who abuse the system and just report every ad.

None of this is new. It's just making the big internet companies follow the same laws everyone else already has to.

Try running a video claiming "Zuckerberg is an X" for some suiitably damning X, and see how long it stays up there.

... and I mean SERIOUS

Nothing less will make any difference.

Not at all.

They very successfully pretended to have trouble explaining, which means that, when they left the hearing, they were mentally high-fiving each other on another sand bank skirted without issue.

After all, if the UK starts getting uppity, they can very well simply declare that they can no longer offer their services in the UK.

It's not like they'll miss a few thousand users per hour.

I may have a different view on this.

If a newspaper published this material they would be liable as they are the source of the material.

If I published false information I would be liable as I was the source of the material.

The problem for meta et al and the Government is that if I publish material on Google's site, who is liable?

There have been arguments about this for years.

If the Government had the balls to issue a decree and *either* go after the media companies or go after the individuals producing the material there would be recourse.

At the moment we're in no man's land where the government doesn't want to scare the big social media companies (think of the post-politics directorships ...) but think it's too hard to chase those actually producing the material so are just staring at oncoming headlights and doing nothing significant.

We need a middle road - the media companies should be legally mandated to take down material, not at the simple request of one individual but through a system to prevent vociferous removal claims, and then those media companies need to be providing user data to the authorities *by warrant* to facilitate court proceedings against those individuals posting false materials. If the companies claim not to be the source publishers then there are no journalistic restrictions on source data ...

My understanding is that social media gets a pass because they are not a publisher. They are just showing what people post. However, since they are managing what people are shown, my feeling is that this could as editorial control and they ought to be treated the same as a publisher. I can't be arsed to add underlines and italics.

I haven't been onto Facebook for years, but in the early days, it would show you what your friends posted in chronological order - which seems fine. When I gave it up, it was just pushing crap at me - which is not fine.

As ever with politicians, they couldn't care less if it affects us sans-culottes but if it affects the nobility or an "important" member of the bourgeoisie such as MPs then "It's a gross invasion of privacy and must be stopped forthwith".

Then these self-same individuals with all the self awareness of a pet rock have the gall to complain that the public are voting for the "wrong" parties in the shape of the populists. Whilst IMO only a fool or a knave would vote for Nigel "I don't even know where Clacton is" Farage or Zach "I can hypnotise your breasts bigger" Polanski I get where the public are coming from regarding the rejection of the status quo.

Vote Count Binface, you know it makes sense!

“ A member of the UK Parliament's lower house…”

…is called an MP. Not a “lawmaker”

So they cry foul but when they use the social medai to spread their lies to the masses it's ok.