Panel debates social media regulation

The merits and pitfalls of regulating social media were discussed during a panel at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit on Tuesday.

ABU DHABI // Members of the media and technology industries debated whether social media should be regulated on Tuesday, and raised questions about who should be regulating it and how.

The burden should not lie on social-media platforms to regulate content when deeper issues are causing extremism, said Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, a journalist and producer for HuffPost Live.

“It’s too easy to think that regulation is going to solve the problems ... because the problems don’t come from social media,” said Mr Shihab-Eldin. “Social media is a reflection of the problems that people feel.”

“I think the real benefit – and I belief this very vehemently – that we’ve seen is that social media has forced the mainstream media, has forced governments to address issues that their citizens are concerned about that they’ve been able to skirt and suppress and contain for decades,” he said.

Proposing more regulation when a minority of extremists are using social media for harm is “a knee-jerk reaction which we’ve seen in the region, just like we’ve seen the equation in the Arab world of constructive criticism and dissent by young people who are jailed because it’s equated now to terrorism,” said Mr Shihab-Eldin.

“Challenging your leader is not terrorism,” he said.

Faisal Abbas, editor-in-chief of Al Arabiya English, argued for the validity of questioning whether content that could be seen as terrorist propaganda should be regulated, such as pornography would.

“As a journalist, I look at the effect on people,” said Mr Abbas.

“I hate to see it when young kids are being brainwashed by terrorist propaganda. That’s my concern.”

Facebook’s practice of not reviewing all content posted is both pragmatic and philosophical, said Richard Allan, who leads the company’s public policy work in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

“Our rules are very clear: you are responsible for what you post,” he said, adding that it is not possible for the company to review all content.

“We don’t want people to believe that things are different in the virtual world from the real world.”

But ultimately the debate perhaps is not over regulation but to what extent it rests in the hands of the companies behind social media, such as Facebook, said Ayman Safadi, chief executive of Path Arabia, a communication and political strategy group in Abu Dhabi.

“Who determines what is OK and what’s not OK? Do we leave it to your board?” he asked.

Hizbollah is considered a terrorist group by many but not all, and some in the Arab world might place some hardline Israeli groups in that category, said Mr Safadi.

“Would you comment publicly, transparently, as to who tells you who is terrorist and who is not?” Mr Safadi asked.

“Who is your point of reference? Is it American law? International law?”

A poll conducted showed that 68 per cent of audience members disagreed that social media should be regulated, while that figure dropped slightly to 64 per cent after the panel.

Becky Anderson, a CNN anchor based in the network’s Abu Dhabi bureau, moderated the discussion.