Kaya 959, Wednesday night

Content, we were told that these platforms would themselves pull it down. And in fact, we say this because we know that it has happened before in other jurisdictions. So, why is it that the IEC battles with people who are out there with various political agendas, sometimes malicious, and sometimes people are just sharing information that they could not verify themselves because they don't have the tools to do that and they think they're doing a good thing? But nonetheless, the point is, somebody

With the technical ability, it was meant to protect South Africans because it is the very same tool that these people use to give to misinform and to disinform. I've got electronic communications law specialist, Khotazo Mampa, who's going to help me understand what's happened here. Khotatzo, thank you so much for making time for us and to help us understand. Let's begin with that press briefing. What were the commitments? Good evening and welcome.

Good evening, Camille, and thanks very much for having me on Point of View. Thank you. So was I mistaken in believing that the press briefing that we saw a couple of days ago where all these various political social media platforms and the IEC had committed to helping us protect this democracy by way of minimizing what kind of disinformation and misinformation was distributed? Was I mistaken in understanding that was going to happen? No, you're certainly not mistaken.

I think that certainly was the intent. Intent. Intent. That's not what was said. The briefing said we have signed an agreement. The truth is, the agreement was unsigned up until today I found that Meta and Microsoft have since signed the agreement. Okay. And at the time, it was an intent. It was an intent. And they were just registering their intent to do something about the challenges that we do see.

In the online space, particularly around information integrity and ensuring that people get the right information. What was committed to, though? So they've committed, and I mean, I drafted the agreement, and we've gone through various drafts. And the pushback from the platforms was certainly to water down a lot of the provisions, de-risk it by actually escaping liability, saying that we can't have an inquiry, for instance, in South Africa that says, oh, platforms were responsible for the way the

Elections outcomes were, for lack of a better description. So we de-risked that to the furthest, I mean, to the fullest extent possible. But in essence, it's the spirit of the commitment that's really recorded and captured in that agreement. And in a nutshell, the platforms are saying that if we do find that content is problematic that that's brought before them, what they will do is resort to their own guidelines and policies and determine what needs to happen to that.