Social Media Regulation: We Are Engaging Google, TikTok – NBC

The National Broadcasting Commission has revealed that it will engage social media platforms after sending a bill to regulate social media to the national assembly.

NBC said this through its Director, Broadcast Monitoring of the NBC, Francisca Aiyetan on Friday while speaking with Daily Trust on the plan of the commission to regulate social media.

She said if social media is not regulated, young people could be misguided.

“Every country is making efforts to regulate social media, and Nigeria also is making efforts because we know that there are a lot of things to harness from it. But if not regulated, it can also be a platform that will misguide our young people.”

“The level we are now is discussing with stakeholders so to agree that, yes, we need to regulate social media and at that level, there should be legislation; there should be strengthening of the law to factor in all the things that are new on the broadcasting and content sharing space.

“And then, when you have the power and the enablement by law to do such things, then we can now look at, do we have the way to do it technology-wise? Nevertheless, presently what we do is that we engage the platform owners as a regulator, we engage Google YouTube, and TikTok, so we know the faces behind these platforms.

Recall that on Tuesday, the Director-General of the NBC, Balarabe Ilelah, disclosed that the commission had sent a regulation bill to the National Assembly.

Describing the ills of social media as a “monster”, the NBC boss lamented that the current law does not give NBC the right to control social media.