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Resolution 2281 (2019)
Social media: social threads or threats to human rights?
1. The Parliamentary Assembly values
highly the positive contribution of social media to the well-being
and development of our societies. They are indispensable tools which
help bring people closer together and facilitate the establishment
and development of new contacts, thus playing an important role
in building social capital. They provide a new public space, where
political affairs and socially relevant themes are discussed, and
where the small parties, minorities or outsider groups that are
frequently silenced in major legacy media can spread their ideas
and views. They have the potential to expose users to more diverse
sources of information and opinions, foster the plurality of voices
which is needed in a democratic society and strengthen democratic
participation.
2. Despite the huge potential benefits of social media for individuals
and for our societies, their misuse is also triggering numerous
harmful consequences for our individual rights and well-being, for
the functioning of democratic institutions and for the development
of our societies, such as cyberbullying, cyberstalking, internet luring,
hate speech and incitation to violence and discrimination, disinformation
and manipulation of public opinion, and undue influence on political
– including electoral – processes.
3. Social media companies are key participants in the regulation
of the information flow on the internet and the way they operate
has a significant impact on freedom of expression, including freedom
of information, but also – in a more insidious way – on the right
to privacy. These are not new concerns for the Assembly and, in the
past, various reports have sought to identify measures to minimise,
if not eliminate, the risk of abuses which the internet makes possible
in these sensitive areas. However, recent scandals have highlighted
the need to further explore the responsibilities that social media
should bear in this respect and the duty that public authorities
have to ensure that such fundamental rights are fully respected.
4. The Assembly considers that social media companies should
rethink and enhance their internal policies to uphold more firmly
the rights to freedom of expression and information, promoting the
diversity of sources, topics and views, as well as better quality
information, while fighting effectively against the dissemination
of unlawful material through their users’ profiles and countering
disinformation more effectively.
5. Moreover, the Assembly wonders whether it has become necessary
to challenge the business model on which major social media companies
have built their wealth, which is based on the massive acquisition
of data from their users, as well as from their acquaintances, and
on their – in practice almost unlimited – exploitation for commercial
purposes. Data mining and profiling are phenomena which seem to
have gone too far and beyond democratic control.
6. Proper use of big data can help to enhance policy design (for
example on infrastructure development and urban planning) and the
provision of key services (for example traffic management and health
care); however, it is necessary to ensure data anonymisation and
to guarantee that only reasonable inferences are drawn from users’
data.
7. The Assembly believes that public authorities should guide
efforts seeking to “secure the human dignity and protection of the
human rights and fundamental freedoms of every individual and …
personal autonomy based on a person’s right to control of his or
her personal data and the processing of such data”, as stated in the
Protocol (CETS No. 223) amending the Convention for the Protection
of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data
(ETS No. 108) (“the modernised Convention 108”). In line with the
view expressed by the Committee of Ministers when adopting the above-mentioned
protocol, the Assembly highlights the importance of a speedy ratification
or accession by the maximum number of parties in order to facilitate
the formation of an all-encompassing legal regime of data protection
under the modernised Convention 108.
8. The Assembly considers that strong collaboration between internet
operators and public authorities is crucial to achieving results.
In this respect, it welcomes the setting up of forms of partnership
and co-operation between internet operators and various Council
of Europe bodies, including the Assembly itself, and it encourages
the partners concerned to further develop this co-operation and
engage in continuous, constructive dialogue, in order to promote
good practice and develop standards to uphold users’ rights and
the safe use of social media.
9. The Assembly therefore recommends that the Council of Europe
member States:
9.1. fully comply
with relevant international obligations concerning the right to
freedom of expression, in particular those arising from Article 10
of the European Convention on Human Rights (ETS No. 5), when developing
the legal framework of this right, and deliver national regulations
requiring that social media providers ensure a diversity of views
and opinions and refrain from silencing controversial political ideas
and content;
9.2. incorporate the teaching of information technology skills,
including the use of social media, into the school curricula from
the earliest age;
9.3. initiate without delay the process required under their
national law to ratify the Protocol amending the Convention for
the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing
of Personal Data;
9.4. pending the above-mentioned ratification process, review
as required the national legislation in force to ensure its full
consistency with the principles enshrined in the modernised Convention
108, and in particular the legitimacy of data processing, which
must have its legal basis in the valid (and therefore also informed)
consent of the users or in another legitimate reason laid down by
law, as well as the principles of transparency and proportionality
of data processing, data minimisation, privacy by design and privacy
by default; controllers, as defined in Article 2 of the modernised
Convention 108, should be bound to take adequate measures to ensure
the rights of the data subjects, as listed in its Article 9;
9.5. encourage and support collaborative fact-checking initiatives
and other improvements of content moderation and curation systems
which are intended to counter the dissemination of deceptive and misleading
information, including through social media;
9.6. equip themselves with the means to sanction violations
of their national legislation and of their international commitments
that could occur on social media;
9.7. promote, within the Internet Governance Forum and the
European Dialogue on Internet Governance, reflection on the possibility
for the internet community to develop, through a collaborative and,
where appropriate, multi-stakeholder process, an external evaluation
and auditing system aimed at determining whether algorithms respect
data protection principles and are unbiased, and a “seal of good practices”
which could be awarded to internet operators whose algorithms are
designed to reduce the risk of filter bubbles and echo chambers
and to foster an environment providing an ideologically cross-cutting
user experience.
10. The Assembly invites the European Union to examine ways to
encourage and support a Europe-wide project intended to provide
internet users with a tool to create, manage and secure their own
personal online data stores (“PODS”), and to consider how the national
and European regulations should evolve to ensure that online services,
especially the most popular ones, offer their users tools which
respect data protection principles and are compatible with PODS
functionalities.
11. The Assembly calls on social media companies to:
11.1. define in clear and unambiguous
terms the standards regarding admissible or inadmissible content,
which must comply with Article 10 of the European Convention on
Human Rights and should be accompanied, if need be, by explanations
and (fictional) examples of content banned from dissemination;
11.2. take an active part not only in identifying inaccurate
or false content circulating through their venues but also in warning
their users about such content, even when it does not qualify as
illegal or harmful and is not taken down; the warning should be
accompanied in the most serious cases by the blocking of the interactive
functions, such as “like” or “share”;
11.3. make systematic use of a network analysis approach to
identify fake accounts and bots, and develop procedures and mechanisms
to exclude bot-generated messages from their “trending” content or
at least flag their accounts and the messages they repost;
11.4. encourage collaborative evaluation of the sources of information
and items of news distributed, developing tools which could allow
the online community to provide feedback on the accuracy and quality
of content they consult, and put in place mechanisms of editorial
oversight by professionals to detect and flag misleading or inaccurate
content;
11.5. strongly engage in fact-checking initiatives which are
intended to counter the dissemination of deceptive and misleading
information through social media;
11.6. support and adhere to the Journalism Trust Initiative
launched by Reporters Without Borders and its partners, the European
Broadcasting Union, Agence France-Presse and the Global Editors
Network;
11.7. design and implement algorithms which respect data protection
principles and encourage plurality and diversity of views and opinions;
11.8. promote the visibility of relevant issues that have low
emotional content as opposed to issues of low relevance, but which
are shared for emotional reasons;
11.9. even in the absence of binding national rules, abide by
the principles enshrined in the modernised Convention 108 and ensure,
through voluntary regulations and the development of good practice,
the full respect of the rights of the data subjects, as listed in
its Article 9; positive measures in this direction should be, among
others, to:
11.9.1. improve the readability of the contractual
terms and conditions which users have to accept, for example by
drawing up visual summaries of this information, in the form of
tables with clear replies to key questions related to privacy concerns;
11.9.2. set privacy rules at the highest restriction level by
default or, at least, provide the users with clear information and
a user-friendly functionality to easily check privacy rules applicable
to them and have the possibility to set these rules at the highest
restriction level;
11.9.3. ensure that their users can oversee, evaluate and refuse
profiling, including the possibility to check the “micro-categories”
used to classify them and determine which ones must not apply to
them; users must also be duly informed about the data the platform
is using to filter and promote content based on their profile and
be able to ask for any data to be deleted, unless the controller
has conflicting legal obligations;
11.9.4. guarantee that the ownership of social media accounts
of deceased people is transmitted to their relatives;
11.9.5. make sure that all functionalities offered to their users
are progressively made compatible with the possibility for users
to create, manage and secure their own personal online data stores.