Instead, the committee's report will play a role in shaping the future of how the UK governs the institutions that spread information and misinformation, and it has especially focused on the social media giants. Unusually - perhaps even unprecedentedly for a report produced by politicians - when it comes to making recommendations on social media, the report is intelligent, incisive and realistic. The argument centres around how much responsibility social media companies should take for the content that we as their users post on them - and at present, the rules give them a lot of carve-outs that most news outlets would kill for. If nothing else, this would destroy most major social networks as we know them: no one has the capacity to pre-vet as much content as is posted on major networks each day. Given the scale that we have allowed social networks to reach, anything too draconian in restricting what is posted would start to pose a serious risk to the freedom of expression of millions. How have the DCMS resolved this dilemma? They've taken the answer that should have been simple and obvious for a long time, and yet still hasn't been acted upon: they have said social networks are neither platform nor publisher, but something different entirely, somewhere between the two. The consequence of that, they say, is that social networks shouldn't be made liable for everything on their sites in the way that publishers are, but the rules governing them can and should be tightened up - and the platform rules would remain for other sites genuinely operating as platforms. Read more