Policy and response

Thursday, 15 March 2018 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The Government is expected to finally lift its social media ban on Friday but there are several lessons to be learnt from how the State reacted to the communal clashes and how the online space can be better managed without infringing on the rights of the law abiding public.

According to statistics released by the Sri Lanka Computer Emergency Readiness Team | Co-ordination Centre (Sri Lanka CERT|CC) following a press conference held by Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructure Minister Harin Fernando this week, CERT had received 3,685 complaints in 2017 against Facebook. So far this year 529 complaints have been made, also related to Facebook.

However of these, CERT had complained to Facebook of only 353 cases and follow-up was at best sketchy with no data available on how many complaints Facebook actually took successful action on. CERT officials admit that in some instances profiles were reactivated after a lapse of several weeks and then another round of complaints had to be made.

CERT has attempted to explain away its tardiness by pointing out that the complainants do not give updates about whether or not Facebook took action but that is a rather lacklustre approach as the events of last week have proved. CERT or a dedicated State body has to vigorously coordinate with Facebook, at the highest levels of the organisations and maintain a consistent updated tally giving details of what profiles or posts have been flagged and whether they have been removed and if others have popped up with the same incendiary message. Ideally such an effort should be accessible by the public so that they have a real time idea of when and what action is taken by Facebook.

Despite the rapid rise of hate speech online over the last few years that mirrored the rise of extremist organisations in Sri Lanka, it took a tragedy of the magnitude of Digana for the Government to push the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) and the Defence Ministry to seriously look into the impact of hate speech on communal relations in Sri Lanka and crack down on incendiary messages on social media. This alone shows how little attention was actually given by the Government to this issue regardless of its many pledges to promote ethnic harmony. This is a grievous oversight that has to be rectified as soon as possible but keeping in mind the privacy and other rights of law-abiding citizens.

All people should not have to pay the price for these vitriolic views of extremists. The IT industry has come forward to work with the Government to establish an acceptable middle ground on this issue so that the public will still be able to use social media without fears of having their right to expression, debate and criticism limited. It is imperative that State bodies work with the private sector, civil society, media and other stakeholders in this effort to look at progressive benchmarks that can be adopted or adapted by Sri Lanka to tackle this scourge in a sustainable way.

Government, with its red tape and cumbersome processes, would find it challenging to manage a space dominated by rapidly-evolving technology and will need much assistance to take this effort forward. It can only be hoped that they are open to ideas, willing to change and progressive in their views.