Twitter will have to “introduce a delay mechanism”
Richard Hillgrove, in The Guardian, writing Twitter cannot be allowed to operate outside the law:
The central point here is whether Twitter and Facebook, as publishers of content, should be as accountable as traditional media. The problem is one of scale. Traditional media controls its content by employing finite numbers of staff, freelance journalists and news agencies. In contrast, Facebook have an army of “citizen journalists” numbering 500 million and Twitter 175 million and don’t employ any of them.
Clearly, they are going to have to introduce a delay mechanism so that content can be checked before it goes up. There will have to be a completely different structure, which will be difficult when the whole thing about Twitter is its spontaneity.
Oh dear.
To be fair, Hillgrove’s Guardian profile describes him as “a business and political public relations consultant”, but this is precisely why anyone creating laws and regulations or even talking about doing so needs to bloody well research, rather than shouting their mouth off. Hillgrove’s comment might have a certain right-on set of Brits and others going “Yes! Twitter must do this”, but Hillgrove clearly has no comprehension whatsoever of the sheer amount of content social networks and other major websites generate. It’s not remotely feasible for any of it to be checked—YouTube gets more then two days’ worth of video uploaded every minute. How the hell can that be checked?
Hillgrove also bleats about accountability (arguing the likes of Twitter should be treated like traditional media) and reeling in social networks unless we “decide to become an anarchistic society”. Much better, clearly, that we become a society that stops the equalising nature of the web and curtails free speech, because otherwise rich people get caught short. And, yes, I realise Twitter and Facebook have an appalling herd mentality at times, but often the herd uses its powers for good—something that is diminishingly so for traditional media.
Hat-tip: Fraser Speirs.
“a delay mechanism so that content can be checked before it goes up” for users numbering “numbering 500 million and Twitter 175 million “. Good luck keeping up to date on that with key words etc….
Holding Twitter (and YouTube, and Facebook, and flickr, and all of these other services) accountable for the stuff people post is like holding the mail service accountable for the contents of the letters, postcards, and newspapers it delivers.
@LKM: Thing is, you can bet the current and previous British governments would do precisely that if they could. We have a massive authoritarianism problem in this country. We also have a lot of people in positions of power who don’t understand technology and are played by the rich, hence our own ‘destroy net neutrality’ and ‘block access to domains because movie studios said so, without even consulting a judge’ laws that are being mulled over by the Tories.