The livestreaming of the Christchurch terrorist attack in New Zeeland in 2019 has demonstrated potential threat to spread illegal and harmful contents on social media by the terrorists to amplify their mal intention to the general users of internet. As a result, online content regulation gets high political momentum around the world after the live video broadcasting of massacre of 51 Muslim worshippers at the Al Noor Mosque by terrorist Brenton Tarrant. Earlier, the global social media companies govern contents voluntarily through their own policy and by mostly depending on AI technology and users’ report to remove any illegal or harmful content. However, this incident has shifted the burden from voluntary action to mandatory legislative measure.
More than 40 new social media content regulation laws have
been adopted worldwide in the last couple of years while another 30 are under
active consideration. These
laws aim to prevent social media platforms being weaponised for the purpose of
flourishing extremism and propaganda by forcing online providers to control
content on their platforms more cautiously. These legislations attempt to
moderate both illegal and harmful but not directly illegal contents on online
surface. Illegal content would encompass a large variety of items which
directly contravene the legislation, such as hate speech, incitement to
violence, child abuse, revenge porn etc. Instead, harmful content, refers to
information that does not strictly fall under legal prohibitions but that might
nevertheless have harmful effects like portraying self-harm, suicidal attempt
content, cyberbullying, mis-or disinformation etc.
Soon after the Christchurch incident, the parliament of the
commonwealth of Australia had enacted the Criminal Code
Amendment (Sharing of Abhorrent Violent Material) Act in March 2019. This
new law created fresh offences and liability for the providers of online
contents and hosting services to make their platforms safe and responsible. The
law compels tech
companies to expeditiously remove illegal and harmful contents and failure to
get rid of the content in a stipulated time could bring imprisonment and fines
of up to 10% of their annual profit. Again in 2021, Australia has
enacted unique Online Safety Act which includes world-first
Adult Cyber Abuse prevention mechanism.
Likewise,
Germany, France, European Union, Turkey, Brazil, Russia, United Kingdom, United
States, India have either already passed or under process to formulate similar
legal framework to govern social media contents. However, there is an
interesting discourse around the globe whether judiciary or private tech
company will determine the legality of content as the recent trend of worldwide
online safety laws assign obligation to assess the legality of the content on
private tech companies. Nonetheless, these laws provide forum for setting up a
complaint handling system to make the tech giants accountable and ask them to
produce transparent annual report on their actions against illegal and harmful
contents.
However,
there is a common allegation of restricting freedom of expression and
imposition of censorship against these laws as there is genuine fear that many hosting providers and platforms will remove
contents to avoid liability without assessing the merit of the content
judiciously. Additionally, outsourcing of private tech companies or
asking a government body instead of employing independent judiciary to evaluate
the legally creates apprehension of restricting dissenting voice on social
media.
However,
Bangladesh has faced a lot of consequence arising out of illegal and harmful
contents on social media ranging from livestreaming of suicide, disclosure of
revenge porn, cyberbullying to harassment, hate speech, abuse, communal unrest
etc. At this moment, there is no specific law governing illegal and harmful
social media contents, although there are some controversial laws like the
Digital Security Act, The ICT Act mainly to prevent cybercrime but not exhaustive
to handle illegal and harmful contents.
Now,
Bangladesh mainly follows command and control approach to regulate toxic
contents on social media where both the government and the court orders telecommunication regulatory authority and digital
security agency to scrap any controversial content or block access to a
particular link from Bangladesh. Hence, there is actual risk of limiting the
freedom of expression, plurality of opinion and restricting dissenting voices
in absence of a clear-cut standard to determine illegal and harmful contents.
Nevertheless, the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory
Commission (BTRC) released a draft regulation on digital, social media and OTT
platforms in 2021 to comply a court order to formulate policy for OTT platforms
only that has great similarity with the much criticised the Indian Information
Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.
Immediately after publishing the draft regulation, it received massive
criticism from rights group and civil society for limiting freedom of
expression. There are so many incomplete and vague terms which have no concrete
definition i.e. sovereignty, integrity or security of the country, decency or
morality, friendly relations with foreign countries, or defamation (clause 6.01
(d)). Lack of proper definition and not knowing the exact elements to
constitute the crime will create a fearful environment to express opinion as
there are several allegations of irrational use of these grounds to jail people
earlier.
Again, clause 7.03 of the
draft obliges intermediaries like messaging service providers to unlock privacy
of correspondence of the users to trace the first originator of a message and
reveal his/her identity upon receipt an order from court or BTRC which is a
clear violation of article 43 of the constitution. Moreover, authorizing BTRC
through this draft regulation raises a genuine apprehension of possible arbitrary use of this power. There are
several other scopes in part two and three of the mentioned regulation that can
violate citizens’ right to freedom of expression and privacy guaranteed under
the constitution. Hence, the draft regulation should be prepared newly
respecting the international human rights standards, established best practices
and aiming to create conducive, safe online environment without contravening
rights of anyone.
Published on the New Age as Sub-Editorial on 10 September 2022 at page 8.
Published on the Daily Sangbad as Sub-Editorial on 15 September 2022 at page 6.
