The Online Safety Commission is exploring take down mechanisms for apps identified as harmful and is working with the government on this issue.
This has been confirmed by Online Safety Commissioner, Filipe Batiwale who says there are a lot of calls for take down of certain applications and platforms, but they need to ensure they have the powers to actually take them down legally.
While speaking to fijivillage News, the Commissioner says they do not have the powers under the Online Safety Act to take pages down.
He says they are hoping that the Online Safety Act reform will give them the opportunity to be more proactive in their relationship with tech platforms, ensuring that these platforms cooperate when requested for assistance and take downs, especially when it's around children content.
When questioned if Fiji is considering a similar approach to what Australia has done in terms of restricting social media access for children under the age of 16, Batiwale says they are not considering it now but are seeing how that is going to be effected in Australia and learning from that before taking any action or decision.
When questioned by fijivillage News about those doing harm getting more sophisticated and if Fiji is at par with it, Batiwale says we need the forensic tools as there are many fake accounts online and we see a lot of pages disseminating hate speech and threatening messages that are seen in the online space.
The Commissioner has also highlighted that outreach and awareness programmes are being expanded to every community and village to help Fijians understand and counter online threats.
