14 September 2020 Human rights defenders demand that social media recognize the ownership of verified users of social media

According to the press service of the Association of Russian Lawyers for Human Rights, over the past 2 months the number of complaints about the blocking of profiles and pages on social networks, with which users do not agree, has increased, especially often people face problems on Facebook.

According to the specialists of the Association of Lawyers of Russia for Human Rights, the recognition of ownership of a profile by a person who has confirmed his account with a passport or other document replacing it is the only logical solution that will protect the rights of the owner. The reason for blocking a profile or a page must be a court decision, the experts of the Association said.

As the Association of Lawyers of Russia for Human Rights said, for many today a page or profile on social networks is part of their private life, part of their professional activity, and blocking without warning is an interference in a person's life, hindering his professional activities, because many profiles and pages exist for more than 10 years, it contains unique information collected by a person or information from an organization, the owner of which is not the person himself, but the owner of a social network, and billions of people on planet Earth are hostages of one owner, and their information is not their property, but is the property of the owner social network. This leads to the fact that the property of billions of people is at the disposal of one person, and gives unlimited power to use and dispose of this information, to make a profit, sometimes not in the interests of the people themselves.

At the same time, according to the Association, the owner of the platform for the exchange of information and communication must understand that he has created a public good that belongs to each user, and not just the owner of the platform.

According to the specialists of the R Association of Russian Lawyers for Human Rights, the ownership of the profile by the user on the basis of ownership will create the need to change the legislation, as well as the adoption of the convention of users of social networks and related information products in order to settle the relationship between the owner of the profile and the owner of the platform.

Commentary by Maria Arkhipova (Bast), chairman of the  Association of Russian Lawyers for Human Rights, Lawyer:

- Digitalization has led to the fact that the created public goods on the Internet began to belong to one person, this is permissible at the beginning, when the technology is just developing, but when technology becomes a public good, it cannot be owned by one person, then it is a monopoly, and the emerging in this regard, negative externalities and abuse. Economists talk about the loss of control of society over public goods due to the fact that the role and place of a person is reduced to the user, and the owner of information resources becomes a monopolist, dictating his own rules and concentrating in his property an unprecedented amount of resources in history, which is characterized as digital fascism when the role of a person is minimized. To eliminate this imbalance, it is necessary to balance the ownership of the information space, in particular, one of the serious steps will be to regulate the activities of social networks. So, the owner of a social network must understand that when creating a social network, he creates a public good and must respect the rights of others and bear the burden associated with this, first of all, guarantee the ownership of the information created by people - pages, profiles, the content of these pages and profiles , i.e. fulfill the requirements commensurate with the assumed role of the owner of the social network and the status of the social network, observe certain restrictions. The state, for its part, is obliged, due to the scale of the phenomenon, not to let the activities of social networks run its course, but to guarantee rights and freedoms, to regulate this type of activity, in particular, to guarantee the right of property to each participant from arbitrary interference and violations.

As told in the Association of Russian Lawyers for Human Rights, the advising proposal was sent to the subjects of the legislative initiative of Russia and the United States by competence.

www.rusadvocat.com