By 2021, more than half of Sri Lanka's 22 million population were using the internet. One key challenge today is to optimize digital codes while minimizing the digital risks, in ways that do not unduly restrict the citizen's right to freedom of expression.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok enable easy self-expression. Yet these services are sometimes misused for spreading hatred, disinformation or sexist content. Abusive behavior, like cyber bullying, privacy violations and digital identity theft, are also rising as more people go online.
Most tech platforms have their own rules and repeat violators face suspension or account termination. These self-regulatory arrangements – such as Facebook's Community Standards and YouTube's Community Guidelines – deal with problematic content and are facilitated through a combination of automated software and human reviewers.
Despite these developments, however, there are growing calls for tech companies to do more at a systemic level to proactively detect, and remove, harmful content more quickly, and to tackle abusive behavior more resolutely.
Codes of Practice for tech companies represent the next level of self-regulation, where multiple tech companies sign the same set of public commitments to improve content monitoring in one country or region. Such Codes are developed in consultation with tech companies and multiple national stakeholders, and provide for the closer monitoring of content moderation, regular self-reporting, and joint reviews.
This collaborative approach started with the EU Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online in 2016. Since then, the EU adopted a Code of Practice on Disinformation, in 2018. The EU's experience inspired the Australian Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation, adopted in early 2021. During 2021, a draft Aotearoa New Zealand Code of Practice for Online Safety and Harms was also prepared, to be finalized in 2022.
In late 2021, for the first time in Sri Lanka, Factum raised the idea of a similar Code of Practice for global tech companies vis-à-vis Sri Lanka, an independent think-tank that analyses global politics and engages in tech diplomacy efforts. To this end, in early 2022, Factum initiated SAFEWebLK, a purely Sri Lankan initiative to prepare a Code of Practice for global tech companies and implement it as a pilot initiative.
The initial work, utilizing Factum's own resources, has already set up working groups and advisory groups with multi-stakeholder representation. The drafting of the Code for Sri Lanka was to be based on consultations with multiple stakeholders in the government, civil society, IT/ICT sector, mass media, political parties and academia. Global and Asian tech companies agreed to engage the process through the Asian Internet Coalition (AIC).
The initial work utilizing Factum's resources has already been done in setting up a working group and advisory group with multi-stakeholder representation.
In 2022, Factum undertook a series of consultations across six (6) provinces in Sri Lanka. Interacting with Sri Lankans of diverse backgrounds, the consultations sought to gather grassroots feedback to the problems of online harm, disinformation, and misinformation. These responses were vital in picking up sentiments on the ground, at a time not only of an economic and political crisis, but also of a concerted attempt on the part of various players to regulate online content in Sri Lanka despite ramifications on freedom of expression and other fundamental rights.
Four years later, the debates that these interventions unleased are still with us. Factum continues to engage with key stakeholders, including civil society and political officials, to arrive at a solution which balances the need to have a regulatory framework for online content with the right to expression.
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