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Sheila Dang and Stephen Nellis
NEW YORK and SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith said on Friday that technology companies would likely change the way they moderated online platforms in response to new foreign government laws , whether US lawmakers act or not. an American law that has allowed social media platforms to flourish.
Smith said that Article 230 of the US Communications Decency Act, which states that technology companies can not be sued for what users say about their online platforms, was a necessary law in the end 1990s, but technology companies are now more mature and more advanced. should have a "new level of responsibility" for what is said on their sites.
He also said that other countries such as New Zealand had passed laws as a result of events such as the mass murder committed in Christchurch earlier this year, which had been retransmitted live on social media platforms.
"Laws around the world will change and, because of the very global technology, US companies will adopt a new approach, even if the US Congress does nothing," Smith said in an interview with Stephen J, editor of Reuters. Adler in New York. Smith has spoken with Reuters as part of a promotional tour of his recently published book "Tools and Weapons".
In the interview, Smith also said that Microsoft had rejected the government's requests for facial recognition software in cases where it feared misuse and would never sell the technology for surveillance purposes.
"We will not sell facial recognition services for mass surveillance anywhere in the world,"
Microsoft has called for stricter regulation of facial recognition technology, used in China to track ethnic minorities. Smith has been vocal in calling for a total ban on technology, saying Microsoft believes it has valid uses and that governments should act faster to regulate it.
"It's hard to innovate if you can not use something, and learn if you can not innovate," Smith said.
(Report by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco and Sheila Dang in New York, edited by Louise Heavens and Steve Orlofsky)
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