Johnson urges social media ‘debate’ after Trump Twitter ban – POLITICO

LONDON — Boris Johnson joined EU leaders in questioning whether or not additional regulation of social media firms is likely to be wanted following Donald Trump’s ban from Twitter.

Whereas indirectly commenting on the choice to completely droop the U.S. President from the platform, the U.Ok. prime minister stated it was time for a “actual debate” concerning the “standing of the large web firms.”

Talking at a scrutiny session with senior MPs, Johnson was requested by international affairs committee chairman Tom Tugendhat whether or not he was “snug {that a} U.S. firm controls the way you talk along with your voters” or whether or not he believed social media firms must be topic to comparable regulation to newspapers and TV stations.

“I do assume there’s an actual debate now available concerning the standing of the large web firms and whether or not they need to be recognized as mere platforms or as publishers, as a result of whenever you begin editorializing you then’re in a special world,” Johnson stated.

“It’s time we had a frank dialog concerning the boundaries that we wish to be set,” he added, together with “the position of those firms in what they select to publish and what they select to not publish.”

Earlier this week, a spokesperson for German Chancellor Angela Merkel referred to as Trump’s Twitter ban “problematic”, including that any impingements on free speech wanted to be “alongside the strains of the regulation and inside the framework outlined by the lawmakers. Not in line with the choice of the administration of social media platforms.”

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has additionally raised issues, telling France Inter: “The regulation of the digital world can’t be completed by the digital oligarchy.”