Lawmakers yesterday urged the government to get tough on social media platforms, amid growing frustrations over the latter’s perceived indifference in protecting users.
They made the comments at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Transportation Committee attended by top Ministry of Digital Affairs officials.
Meta Platforms Inc, the company that owns Facebook, made massive profits off advertising revenues derived from a platform rife with fraud and scammers, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) said.
Photo: CNA
The ministry should exercise its regulatory authority to protect Taiwanese, he said.
The government should also inform lawmakers about a Meta delegation’s visit to Taiwan next month, he added.
Minister of Digital Affairs Huang Yen-nun (黃彥男) said the ministry has been talking with Meta’s leadership to facilitate the company’s compliance with Taiwanese law, ideally of its own volition.
The ministry and Meta are expected to confer on recent cases of reported fraud on Facebook and other platforms, he said, adding that fines would be issued on a case-by-case basis if necessary.
Deputy Minister of Digital Affairs Lin Yi-jing (林宜敬) said the Meta representatives are to discuss the platform’s inner workings with Taiwanese officials, who until now could only observe fraudulent activities on the user end.
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Legislator Lin Kuo-cheng (林國成) said the government should close a legal loophole allowing the platform Threads to operate outside regulatory oversight.
An estimated 350,000 Taiwanese use the platform, he said.
Threads has recently enabled advertisement functions on the platform and could potentially become subject to the nation’s cyberfraud prevention laws, should its user count and risk factor exceed a defined threshold, Huang said.
Administration for Digital Industries Deputy Director-General Lin Chun-hsiu (林俊秀) said his agency had asked Meta to kill fraudulent ads on Threads before and the company complied with the demands.
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