PARENTS are sharing heart-wrenching accounts of their children being shamed on social media, with some forced to relocate or move schools entirely to escape the trauma, says Solara Law and Policy Founder and Consultant David Edward Solvalu.
Mr Solvalu is the lead consultant for the review team conducting the public consultations.
Despite the low turnout at yesterday’s consultation in Sigatoka, Mr Solvalu said these issues were highlighted during the ongoing public consultations on the review of the Online Safety Act.
Mr Solvalu said public consultations, which commenced in Suva and Nausori, highlighted deep-seated concerns regarding internet safety, cyber-abuse, cyber-bullying, and defamatory social media posts.
“People are mostly concerned with issues affecting children, ensuring that children are protected, that there’s a system in place for that,” he said.
“This review project is for online safety, right, so we’re dealing with conduct on the internet, particularly on social media sites, so people who have expressed their views, they focus on the fact that many of them do experience harm on the internet, cyber-abuse, cyber-bullying, and basically defamatory posts or posts about them.
“Parents have come to share stories about things that kids have encountered or experienced in school, shaming them on social media sites, and how in some instances they’ve had to relocate or move to another school, and so these are the issues that we are focusing on how to create a safe environment on the internet for all people, but particularly vulnerable persons.”
Members of the public are demanding a more proactive legal framework to protect internet users from online harm.
“They want action, they want things to be taken, they want the law to be more robust, more proactive, and so ways that we’re looking at and people have also supported are things like ensuring that the Online Safety Commission has more powers to act, for example, to issue takedown notices where material is clearly harmful.”
