The new media landscape is here to stay. But while social media becomes increasingly more important, it raises numerous questions. On the one hand, major social media actors are censoring historical and cultural art-works portraying e.g. nudity, while on the other hand millions of fake news posts are scattered across the internet and spread widely on social media. It is against this backdrop that ALDE is hosting a high profile event today, with the aim of addressing this new reality and also identifying possible solutions on how to protect users’ rights to make updates and post pictures on social media while respecting the law.
ALDE MEP Morten Løkkegaard (Venstre, Denmark) commented prior to the event:
“How do we match a whole world’s use of social media with the way we handle freedom of expression in practice and what happens when social media ends up challenging this fundamental freedom? These are important questions to ask. The response to these challenges we are facing is not necessarily more legislation, as long as we have a solid framework.”
“We need to deal with the obstacles in a different way: by engaging industry and most importantly pointing our attention to the user. We need to stand up for freedom of expression on the one hand. On the other, users have to develop skills on how to deal with content shared on social media, which does not necessarily represent the full truth. It is my hope that better educated, users along with more political discussions on that topic, will be able to force industry to take greater social and educational responsibility.”
You can follow today’s event “Social Media − Industry censorship or consumer right?”(15-17:30h) via web stream. For more information, please click here.
