Business Environment: Social Media Regulation Risks in the UK

This report examines the risks faced by social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram due to proposed and actual government regulations in the UK. It highlights the increasing momentum of these platforms and the substantial user base, particularly among millennials. The report focu...Read More

BUSINESS
ENVIRONMENT

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSIONS..............................................................................................................................2
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................3

INTRODUCTION
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are few of the most used social media portals in the
world, which are used by millions of individuals to excahnge information (Schor, 2016). The
following paper is related to the rising risks which these platforms face due to proposed or actual
government regulation and its impact on the companies.
MAIN BODY
There are several social media portals like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, which are
increeasingly gaining momentum in countries like UK. There are several individuals which use
these social media portals on daily basis to interact with others, share information, take part in
social activities, etc.
Illustration 1: Use of Facebook as per age and gender
(Source: THE LATEST UK SOCIAL MEDIA STATISTICS FOR 2019, 2019)
As per the above statistics, majority of people within the UK use Facebook, especially
millennials. There are almost 60 million daily users of this portal in the country, along with
almost 24 million Instagram users and almost 14 million Twitter users (THE LATEST UK
SOCIAL MEDIA STATISTICS FOR 2019, 2019). However, there are several proposed
legislations regarding social media in the UK which might enhance risks for these firms.
The first and foremost regulation, which is proposed against these social media portals is
regarding harmful content. Currently, the biggest problem in this respect, which the government
is dealing with is with harmful content (Graber and Dunaway, 2017). However, this proposed
government legislation is regarding guidelines to deal with sharing of harmful content on these
social media outlets in context with terrorism, violence, cyber bullying, suicide encouragement
and so forth. However, to deal with the same, this legislation proposes to make executives of
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these portals responsible in relation with sharing of this harmful content (U.K. Authorities
Propose Making Social Media Executives Personally Responsible for Harmful Content, 2019).
Several governmental authorities are “Online Harms White Paper”, are emphasising on its
implementaion to takle with this problem. However, it would have a really negative impact on
the firms. This is because they will be required to monitor each activity within their portals
which might actually be violation of privacy of certain individuals. Moreover, blaming only
executives of failure of safety would also cause disbelief in individuals regarding these firms
(Janowski, 2015).
Another similar proposal which is proposed against Facebook, Twitter and Instagram is
that these organisations are required to publish transparent annual reports in relation to how these
companies are dealing with cyber security (Social media firms including Facebook and Twitter
to be legally forced to protect users, 2019). This is a major risk for these companies as they will
be subjected to fines and penalties if their methods are perceived as ineffective by the
government. Furthermore, with effective transparency, their reputation might be hampered in the
market which would severely damage the goodwill of these social media companies.
CONCLUSIONS
Thus, it is concluded that social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
could be very much affected by proposed regulations of the government in relation to their
activities. Moreover, these organisations would be facing severely negative impacts through the
implementation of these regulations. This requires all these social media companies to take
appropriate actions which are in relation to effective and essential functioning of these
organisations in compliance with these new legislations.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Graber, D.A. and Dunaway, J., 2017. Mass media and American politics. Cq Press.
Janowski, T., 2015. Digital government evolution: From transformation to contextualization.
Schor, J., 2016. Debating the sharing economy. Journal of Self-Governance and Management
Economics. 4(3). pp.7-22.
Online
Social media firms including Facebook and Twitter to be legally forced to protect users. 2019.
[Online] Available Through: <https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/social-
media-regulation-facebook-twitter-government-jeremy-wright-a8858981.html>
THE LATEST UK SOCIAL MEDIA STATISTICS FOR 2019. 2019. [Online] Available Through:
<https://www.avocadosocial.com/latest-social-media-statistics-and-demographics-for-
the-uk-in-2019/>
U.K. Authorities Propose Making Social Media Executives Personally Responsible for Harmful
Content. 2019. [Online] Available Through: <http://time.com/5565843/united-kingdom-
social-media-regulations/>
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