Speaker of Kuwait’s National Assembly Marzouq Al-Ghanim on Tuesday submitted a proposal on forming a parliamentary committee to discuss the possibility of avoiding the misuse of social media networks, with maintaining the values of freedom and democracy.
This came in Al-Ghanim’s speech before the fifth World Conference of Speakers of Parliament in Vienna today. The committee is expected to include representatives from all geopolitical groups to discuss all ideas relating to this topic, with the aim of making balance between the values of freedom and democracy on the one hand and ensuring not to use social media in a “bad and destructive way” on the other.
Al-Ghanim stressed that there is no ready-made formula for organizing regulations regarding filtering “dangerous” content on social media, calling for holding discussions amongst all parties – countries, governments, parliaments, and others involved in establishing these networks. Social media networks are positive and encouraging in general, and contributed to boosting freedom and democracy, he added. “As parliamentarians, we have benefited from social medial in communicating with people.
Building awareness is important but it is a long-term process,” he said. He called for avoiding hatred, racism, abolitionist and exclusionary speech under the pretext of freedom, saying this may contribute to destroying “our societies and dragging them into the unknown.” When talking about social media, we do not necessarily talk about known people, but in most cases we deal with unidentified entities, intelligence services, gangs, terrorists and others, he said. The Kuwaiti top lawmaker called for further discussions and sharing expertise in this file at varied levels.
Source-Kuna
