Gov­ern­ment prepar­ing reg­u­la­tion of social media giants in Hungary

The jus­tice min­istry is prepar­ing draft leg­is­la­tion to reg­u­late the oper­a­tion of social media giants in Hun­gary, Jus­tice Min­is­ter Judit Var­ga said on Face­book on Tuesday. 

The aim is “legal, trans­par­ent and con­trol­lable oper­a­tion”, Var­ga said in her bilin­gual post, adding that the reg­u­la­tion bind­ing all oth­er eco­nom­ic play­ers should apply to tech giants too.

While Hun­gary is coop­er­at­ing in prepar­ing sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion in the Euro­pean Union, “recent events have shown that we need to act faster to defend peo­ple,” she said. 

“Today, every­one can be arbi­trar­i­ly switched off from the online space with­out any offi­cial, trans­par­ent and fair pro­ceed­ing and legal rem­e­dy,” she added. This goes for state lead­ers as well as pri­vate indi­vid­u­als, she said.

Caus­ing “dig­i­tal dam­age” delib­er­ate­ly, whether for ide­o­log­i­cal or busi­ness-relat­ed rea­sons, should have reper­cus­sions in Hun­gary, Var­ga said. The bill will be sub­mit­ted to par­lia­ment in the spring, Var­ga said.

As we wrote two weeks before, Min­is­ter Var­ga said that she shared Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel’s view that the lock­ing of US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s user account by Twit­ter was rea­son for concern.

Also we wrote last week, she has called an extra­or­di­nary meet­ing of the Dig­i­tal Free­dom Com­mit­tee tasked with mon­i­tor­ing online space over what she says are vio­la­tions of demo­c­ra­t­ic norms by tech giants.

Source: dai​lynew​shun​gary​.com