The public have been advised, to desist from spreading and promoting hate speech, or disagreeable content through the social media.
The Executive Director, Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD), Engineer Yunusa Zakari Ya’u, made the indication while addressing participants of the first education forum organized by the center, held in Kano.
According to him, there’s the need for individuals to understand the spectrum of speech act, that would guide them on the type of information to disseminate, on their social media platforms.
Engineer Yunusa maintained that, in the past, the society rely on the broadcast media for news, where reports were subjected to careful scrutiny and gate keeping, before being released to the public, saying that, with the proliferation of the social media, citizen journalism serve as a source of first hand information, without following due process.
“Speech may be textual, graphic, symbolic, or in the form of painting”, he said.
In his presentation titled “How individuals can report Community Standards Violation to Meta (Facebook)” CITAD’s coordinator, Countering Hate Speech, Hamza Ibrahim, explained how meta deploy the services of trusted content partners to collate reports.
He noted that, the center as a trusted content partner, had the mandate to receive complaints regarding violation of community standards for onward submission.
“Due to complaints on lack of response after receiving reports, meta engaged CITAD as a trusted partner where we contact the team on contents that can instigate groups against each other”, he noted.
Presenting a paper titled “When Print Media goes online: How does it deal with harmful content and comments from readers” Nana Hauwa Sule, highlighted that, harmful content as any context or content online that causes disturbance or harm to a person, group or brand.
She identified 4 steps, on how to stay alert, which includes regular digital search to fish out miscreants, learning and educating staff on guidelines of all digital platforms, keeping abreast of changing trends, and developing disaster recovery plan (DRP).
“Types of harmful content that media can face are internally created harmful content and externally created harmful content”, she added.
The event themed : Understanding the role of community standards in fighting harmful content online: was chaired by a lecturer with the department of Mass communications, Bayero university Kano, Dr. Bala Muhammad, and marked by paper presentations, as well as virtual presentation by Meta’s Anglophone west Africa public policy team.
KHADIJAH ALIYU
