UK digital minister warns ``criminal penalties will not be avoided even if Facebook changes its name to Meta''

At the end of October, the former Facebook changed its name to "Meta", and in response to this, the British minister issued a statement saying, "Even if you rebrand (change your name), you cannot escape criminal punishment." I'm here.

The UK Minister for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Nadine Dries, told MPs at a hearing on the Online Safety Bill (to crack down on harmful content on the web) that under the new law, He promised to impose criminal penalties on SNS executives. It is in this context that I made this remark to Meta, which has one of the largest social networking sites, and declared that they would not stop pursuing criminal responsibility just because they changed their name.

In the UK, social media companies that help spread illegal or harmful content will be fined 10% of their global annual turnover or £18 million, whichever is higher. I am considering. Executives at these social media companies face criminal penalties within two years if they fail to stop the spread of content deemed illegal.

However, Mr. Dries is seeking a quicker response, saying, 'It's not two years. Criminal liability will be held in three to six months.'

Meta also said it plans to hire 10,000 engineers in the UK to build the Metaverse. But Dries said those additional hires should be tasked with "enforcing your company's policies and removing harmful algorithms."

Dries wrote in a column for Britain's Daily Mail last month that ``anonymity issues have dominated the talk of online abuse this past week,'' and ``rest assured, this The bill (Online Safety Bill) ends anonymous abuse because it ends abuse, for good."

Whatever Meta's motives for changing its name from Facebook were, it was soon after the revelation that Meta had research data showing that their social network was having a negative impact on teens, but deliberately hid it. It should be hard to avoid the impression that you tried to divert your attention just at the timing of. It should have restarted with a fresh slate, but it may have added fuel to the fire.

Source:CNBC