Safer Internet Day is described as the day “to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, especially among children and young people across the world. It is a 100 country effort to make the Internet a better place for everyone.
This year, the celebration took place on 9th February and Facebook as an online company was involved in it. The company decided to convene a Women’s Safety round-table event on 10th of this month which was attended by participants from women rights groups, NGOs and from academic fronts. The participants were from across Sub-Saharan Africa and the objective of the meeting was to “create a harassment free online environment where everyone can feel safe to share and interact.”
“We have a community of nearly 1.6 billion people and we work hard to develop our global policies that focus on safety, encouraging online respect, and honouring the cultural diversity of our platform.”Facebook’s Head of Global Safety, Antigone Davis was quoted. “At Facebook, safety is at the centre of how we build products.
Thirty organizations from Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Malawi, South Africa, Zambia, Botswana, Uganda, Cameroon and Zimbabwe were represented in the meeting. The round-table that was held in Kenya was the first one with others to be held in the Middle East, Ireland and US.
Over 3.2 billion people are internet users and majority of them have Facebook accounts due to the fact that almost 1.6 billion are active on the platform. Facebook has the influence to push for online safety due to its large user base and in a time where privacy is a big issue, this is a positive effort from the social networking giant.
