South Africans have lashed out on social media after\u00a0Safety and Security Minister David Mahlobo announced on Monday 6 March that government was contemplating new regulations to better regulate\u00a0social media in South Africa.<\/p>\n
While Mahlobo emphasised the regulations would be used to combat security threats and fake news in the country, citizens took to Facebook and Twitter using #HandsOffSocialMedia to express their concerns that the proposed laws would be used by government as a form of censorship.<\/p>\n
As at the time of writing, Mahlobo is yet to formally introduce any of his proposed regulations\u00a0– however, government has already introduced a number of proposed ‘censorship’ laws for parliamentary consideration since the start of 2017.<\/p>\n
BusinessTech looked at the incoming laws you need to know about before hitting send on WhatsApp, Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook or other social media platforms\u00a0in South Africa.<\/p>\n
The Film and Publications Amendment Bill intends to regulate content posted to private communications services, such as WhatsApp according to\u00a0a parliamentary presentation\u00a0on 7 March 2017.<\/p>\n
This would mean that \u00a0government would be able to restrict your social media messages based on the content they contain, even if they were sent in private.<\/p>\n
In an earlier parliamentary session the board also confirmed that the new\u00a0Amendment Bill would be looking at broader internet censorship which would include the limiting\u00a0of access to pornography and other restricted materials through search engines such as Google in South Africa.<\/p>\n