Internal Affairs Minister Jan Tinetti’s announcement of a review of the content regulatory framework is a bigger deal than many might suspect.
What last week’s press release really meant when it said that “New Zealanders will be better protected from harmful or illegal content as a result of work to design a modern, flexible and coherent regulatory framework” was that the Government is about to step up and regulate social media platforms.
Tinetti confirmed to Newsroom after the announcement that one intended outcome of the review was a legal framework that would guide companies like Facebook in making content moderation decisions about material covered by New Zealand law.
“I have met with the likes of Facebook and some of the others as well and they’ve told us that they’re very supportive of this review. That’s exactly what we’re hoping to do with this,” she said.
InternetNZ chief executive Jordan Carter said he supported the move.
“The principle of government regulation is fine on this stuff. Government regulates content on all forms of media one way or another, and there isn’t any reason or principle not to do that online,” he said.
The review has a wide scope, taking in broadcasting and advertising standards, the Harmful Digital Communication Act, the classification system and Chief Censor’s office and areas not covered by existing laws, like misinformation and disinformation.
“This has been in discussion for quite some time. In fact, it was first discussed in 2008. Ministers have tried to get it underway at different points since that time,” she said.
“We essentially have six different frameworks or different systems or regulatory functions that regulate the media or content in New Zealand. Most of these systems were developed in the 1980s or 1990s or suited those times.”
The resultant consolidated framework would be platform- and medium-neutral. In other words, it would apply the same legal force to printed flyers distributed in mailboxes and Hollywood movies and Facebook posts alike.
However, that was all subject to the results of targeted consultation that is just beginning. After that, Tinetti would take a paper to Cabinet. But she did tell Newsroom that no big tech firms had expressed opposition to regulation, in the conversations she’d had with them.
Carter said it was good to see the Government moving in this direction, but that he wanted the scope of the nascent review to be broadened.
“The scope feels a bit narrower than we would have liked. It seems to be focused on fixes to the regulatory framework rather than taking an all-in look at the media or information ecosystem, as we like to call it,” he said.
“But it didn’t entirely lock that down. It said there was some consultation formally to come. So we’ll be going back to argue that point, because the regulatory system is part of it but if you don’t think about the information system as a whole, then we’re never going to get the outcomes we want.”
Carter said the goal of any such review should an information ecosystem where people can have informed debates easily and where misinformation and disinformation and online harm were less prevalent.
“If you just say there’s a problem with harmful content here and we want to regulate to tackle it, probably you’re still just operating in a narrow silo and won’t achieve the outcomes that you’re looking for.”
In a report to Tinetti in February that has been released under the Official Information Act, Chief Censor David Shanks outlined some of his own thoughts about a future review of the media regulatory system.
This would include guidelines for dealing with borderline content which might not violate the law or be subject to regulatory but which needs addressing nonetheless.
“Internationally, we have seen this type of issue has increased attention to categories of content that may be seriously misleading and even harmful, but which fall short of illegality,” he said.
“What to do about content that may be harmful but which is not illegal, and which may be subject to propagation or amplification by platform algorithms, is one of a number of issues that would be able to be explored in a fundamental review of New Zealand’s media regulation.”
