Social media sites should adhere to ‘national laws and prescripts’, committee hears

The Film and Publications Board (FPB) is aiming to clamp down on social media sites that disseminate harmful content.

The FPB was before the Select Committee on Economic Development to update parliamentarians on the work done to protect South Africans from online harm.

In line with the Films and Publications Amendment Act of 2019, the FPB is tasked with formulating policy that regulates digital media at its distribution, among other functions.

Protecting children from harm

The FPB’s mandate on social media is limited to hate speech, propaganda for war, the non-consensual sharing of intimate images and the distribution of child sexual abuse material.

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

“If a stranger were to knock at the house and say ‘I am here to meet your seven-year-old child in the bedroom’, no parent is going to allow that.

“But, a seven-year-old child with a device connected to the internet, that seven-year-old is talking to millions and millions of strangers across the globe and that digital device can bring harm to the child,” Tlhako told the committee.

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

Those 18 cases involved 178 411 individual pieces of content, with 7 461 of those being confirmed as containing child abuse.

“Since January 2025, there are two ongoing cases with a combined of 40 000 images and there’s an ongoing case from 2024 with 137 415 images that the FPB is analysing,” stated the board.

Enforcement of general compliance involved 574 inspections, where the FPB issued 108 compliance notices and 14 take down notices.

With the help of police, the FPB participated in 19 raids where they confiscated R11 million worth of illegal content, including counterfeit DVDs and music.

Social media unregulated

The FPB conducted just over 200 online safety awareness campaigns, but the board noted that social media platforms were unregulated distributors of content.

Director-General (DG) for the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies Nonkqubela Jordan-Dyani noted that the department was reliant on platforms like Facebook and X to enforce its own user guidelines.

The DG noted that social media sites were outside the jurisdiction of local authorities, so any complaints or prosecutions would require costly cases in foreign territories.

She added that there was a need to balance regulation with innovation, urging social media platform owners to meet the government halfway.

“We would, therefore, firstly require that you would have some jurisdictional presence within our borders, and therefore, it becomes easier for us to engage with you, and we will also require you to adhere to our national laws and prescripts,” said Jordan-Dyani.

Thlako explained that they were not giving the social media platforms an ultimatum but understood that each site had territory-specific community guidelines to match national interests.

“We’re just saying, let’s at least have alignment, because we are all dealing with the same issues,” said Thlako.

“It’s about the balancing act. The balance between the freedom of expression, in line with the Bill of Rights, but also how then do we create a responsible society,” he continued.

‘Kill the boer’

Hate speech and propaganda for war are high on the FPB’s list of harmful content, and the Democratic Alliance’s Nicolaas Pienaar questioned their stance on the ‘Kill the Boer’ chant.

Thlako explained that the South African Human Rights Commission and the courts were “more empowered” bodies, stating that they adhere to those institutions’ rulings on that topic.

“The prohibitions on hate speech or propaganda for war, these are the prohibitions and provisions taken from the Bill of Rights on freedom of expression,” Thlako concluded.

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