NEW YORK – United Nations (UN) secretary-general Antonio Guterres said yesterday that he was not concerned about who manages a social media platform like Twitter as much as how it was managed.
“I have no personal feelings in relation to who manages a platform,” he said. “I’m very interested in how the platform is managed.”
The UN chief also thinks there should be regulations spelling out responsibilities in social media in as much as news agencies, newspapers and broadcasters are responsible for their content.
“My recommendation to whoever owns any platform is to make sure that the freedom of expression, especially of journalists, is respected and that hate speech, neo-Nazism, white supremacism, the other forms of extremism, do not find their way through those social platforms,” Xinhua quoted him as telling an end-of-year news conference.
Guterres was asked whether he would consider closing his Twitter account and if he would meet with Twitter’s owner, Elon Musk.
“I will do whatever my conscience tells me to do at the moment – in which it makes sense,” he replied. “So, for the moment, I think that the most reasonable thing is to maintain the account as it is, as the account also has an important role to play. But of course, we will be attentive to the situation.”
He added that he did not see the question as being on meetings with people like Musk, when the question is to establish clear rules on the responsibilities of social media platforms.
“We live in a kind of a legal void in which these platforms can do whatever they want, can convey whatever they want, and there are no legal consequences,” the secretary-general said.
Musk, the centre of controversy over social media on the internet, launched a Twitter poll on whether he should step down as the chief executive of his newly acquired company following the termination of the accounts of several journalists and then the restoration of some of their accounts.
Published reports said the poll recommended he step down. – Bernama, December 20, 2022
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