Time to clean up social media’s dark side

Social media seemed like a good idea at the time, right? Now it’s a cesspit of hate and sleaze, being used to change people’s attitudes and behaviour on an industrial scale.

The Film and Publications Board (FPB) seems to be moving in the right direction by vowing to clamp down on those social media platforms which disseminate harmful content.

Effectively our board of censors, the FPB has some powers to deal with hate speech, propaganda for war, the nonconsensual sharing of intimate images and the distribution of child sexual abuse material.

FPB Acting CEO Ephraim Tlhako stressed to parliament that predators are rife online and that children are easy targets if given free rein on their devices.

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Between April and December last year, the FPB assisted police with 18 cases where content containing abuse against children required analysis.

Those cases involved 178 411 individual pieces of content, with 7 461 of those being confirmed as containing child abuse.

That’s the encouraging news. Less optimistic is the reality that hate speech and fake news comprise a large proportion of social media content these days.

And those who are responsible are quick to hide behind “freedom of speech”. It’s not going to be an easy, or a short, fight.

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