What is the issue?
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 minimising 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 behaviour, 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 behaviour more resolutely.
What is happening elsewhere?
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 finalised in 2022.
What is SAFEWebLK?
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 will 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 have agreed to engage the process through the Asian Internet Coalition (AIC). The Code’s pilot implementation phase will follow its finalization in mid-2022.
Our Team
Core Group
• Mr Nalaka Gunawardene
• Ms Mandana Ismail Abeywickrema
• Dr Gehan Gunatilleke
• Ms Helani Galpaya
• Ms Deepanjalie Abeywardana
• Ms Saritha Irugalbandara
Advisory Group
• Mr N. M. Ameen, Senior Journalist and Editor
• Mr Prasantha Lal De Alwis, President’s Counsel
• Mr Mahinda Deshapriya, Former Chair, Election Commission
• Mr Damith Hettihewa, President, Computer Society of Sri Lanka
• Ms Hana Ibrahim, Senior Journalist and Editor
• Professor Saumya Liyanage, Performing arts academic, actor
• Dr S. Raguram, Head of Media Studies, University of Jaffna
• Ms Roel Raymond, Journalist and Chief Editor, Roar Media
• Professor Rohan Samarajiva, Policy researcher and Chair, LIRNEasia
• Ms Sharanya Sekaram, Lawyer, feminist and activist
• Dr Ruvan Weerasinghe, Leading researcher, Univ of Colombo
• Mrs Kshenuka Senewiratne, Senior Advisor to the President on International Media
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