LONDON: Facebook, Twitter and Chinese-owned TikTok face fines of up to 10 percent of turnover if they fail to remove and limit the spread of illegal content under laws proposed by Britain on Tuesday.
Tech platforms will also need to do more to protect children from being exposed to grooming, bullying and pornography, the government said, to ensure the safety of children online.
“We are entering a new age of accountability for tech to protect children and vulnerable users, to restore trust in this industry, and to enshrine in law safeguards for free speech,” Britain’s Digital Secretary Oliver Dowden said.
Governments are wrestling over measures to better control illegal or dangerous content on social media, with the European Union set to unveil its own package on Tuesday.
Britain’s new rules, which will be introduced in legislation next year, could lead to sites which break the rules being blocked and senior managers held liable for content.
Popular platforms will be required to have clear policies for content that, while not illegal, could cause harm such as disseminating misinformation about COVID vaccines.
Dowden said the framework would give large digital businesses “robust rules” to follow.
Facebook and Google have said they would work with the government on the regulations. Both companies said they took safety extremely seriously and they had already changed their policies and operations to better tackle the issue.
“The safety of our online communities – our users and our creators – is our top priority, and so we haven’t waited for legislation to act,” said Ben McOwen Wilson, managing director of Google’s YouTube UK.
“We have worked with industry, community groups and the Government to tackle harmful content.”
Fast growing video-sharing platform TikTok, owned by China’s Bytedance, said it was looking forward to reviewing the proposals and working with the government to continue to strengthen online safety.
“At TikTok, safety isn’t a bolt-on or a nice-to-have, it’s our starting point to building a creative, diverse community,” a spokesman said.
British media regulator Ofcom will be given the power to fine companies up to $24 million or 10 percent of global turnover, whichever is higher, for breaking the rules.
It will also be able to block non-compliant services from being accessed in Britain.
Online journalism and reader comments on news publishers’ websites will be exempt to safeguard freedom of expression.
Facebook, Twitter face British fines if fail on harmful content
https://arab.news/cybtd
Facebook, Twitter face British fines if fail on harmful content
- ‘We are entering a new age of accountability for tech to protect children and vulnerable users’
- Popular platforms will be required to have clear policies for content that, while not illegal, could cause harm
To infinity and beyond: Grendizer’s 50 years of inspiring Arabs
- 50 years after its creation, the Grendizer anime series continues to capture Arab imagination
- Arab News Japan speaks to creator Go Nagai, Middle Eastern fans and retells the story behind the UFO Robot tasked with protecting our planet
LONDON: Few cultural imports have crossed borders as unexpectedly, or as powerfully, as Grendizer, the Japanese giant robot that half a century ago became a childhood hero across the Arab world, nowhere more so than in Saudi Arabia.
Created in Japan in the mid-1970s by manga artist Go Nagai, Grendizer was part of the “mecha” tradition of giant robots. The genre was shaped by Japan’s experience during the Second World War, and explored themes of invasion, resistance and loss through the medium of science fiction.
But while the series enjoyed moderate success in Japan, its true legacy was established thousands of kilometers away in the Middle East.
The anime “UFO Robot Grendizer” arrived on television in the region in 1979, dubbed into Arabic and initially broadcast in Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war. The story it told of the heroic Duke Fleed, a displaced prince whose planet had been destroyed by alien invaders, struck a chord with children growing up amid regional conflict and occupation by Israel.
Its themes of defending one’s homeland, standing up to aggression and protecting the innocent were painfully relevant in the region, transforming the series from mere entertainment into a kind of emotional refuge.
Much of the show’s impact came from its successful Arabization. The powerful Arabic dubbing and emotionally charged voice-acting, especially by Lebanese actor Jihad El-Atrash as Duke Fleed, lent the show a moral gravity unmatched by other cartoons of the era.
The theme song for the series, performed by Sami Clark, became an anthem that the Lebanese singer continued to perform at concerts and festivals right up until his death in 2022.
By the early 1980s, “Grendizer” had spread across the Middle East, inspiring fandoms in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and beyond. For many, it was not only their first exposure to anime, it also delivered lessons on values such as justice and honor.
Grendizer was so influential in the region that it became the subject of scholarly research, which in addition to recognizing the ways in which the plight of the show’s characters resonated with the audience in the Middle East, also linked the show’s popularity to generational memories of displacement, particularly the Palestinian Nakba.
Half a century later, “Grendizer” remains culturally alive and relevant in the region. In Saudi Arabia, which embraced the original version of the show wholeheartedly, Manga Productions is now introducing a new generation of fans to a modernized version of the character, through a video game, The Feast of The Wolves, which is available in Arabic and eight other languages on platforms including PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch, and a new Arabic-language anime series, “Grendizer U,” which was broadcast last year.
Fifty years after the debut of the show, “Grendizer” is back — although to a generation of fans of the original series, their shelves still full of merchandise and memorabilia, it never really went away.
