"Reining in Tech Platforms"
Marcelo Thompson
HKU Bulletin
Published in May 2024
Fake news and misinformation are easily published and circulated on platforms such as Google, Facebook and YouTube. There are moves to make these media responsible for the message they convey.
In 2022, US courts ordered American talk show host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay more than US$1 billion in damages to the parents of several of the 20 children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School by a gunman in 2012. Jones had been claiming online since 2014 that the deaths were a ‘hoax’ and the parents ‘crisis actors’ and, until 2018, platforms such as Facebook and YouTube allowed his content to be posted and shared. They removed him that year for a range of offensive content, but the question lingered: what obligation did those platforms have to keep such fake and harmful information out of the public arena?
To Dr Marcelo Thompson, Adjunct Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law, the answer is clear – platforms must do more to moderate their content. Unfortunately, while many platforms are global and their content circulates worldwide, the laws that govern them are set locally, impeding convergence, he said.
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