Finnish lawmakers Jarno Limnell and Marko Kilpi have raised concerns over a form of livestreaming in which people’s distress, substance abuse and dangerous behaviour are turned into online entertainment.
Both MPs represent Finland’s National Coalition Party. Limnell, a cybersecurity expert, says particular attention should be paid to the way online platforms and viewer behaviour can encourage increasingly dangerous content.
The issue has received renewed attention after a Finnish person in their twenties seriously injured themselves during a livestream last week and later died.
Limnell said the case raises broader questions about the incentives created by digital platforms.
“If increasingly extreme behaviour brings more viewers and more money, it creates a dangerous incentive,” he said in a statement.
Limnell argues that authorities and platforms should examine how the spread of dangerous livestreams, as well as financial support for them, could be restricted more effectively.
He said freedom of expression should not mean that digital platforms can profit from people in distress without responsibility.
Concern over children watching harmful content
Marko Kilpi, an MP and former long-serving police officer, has focused particularly on the risk to children.
According to Kilpi, social media can bring violence, criminal behaviour, substance abuse and self-harm directly onto children’s phones in ways that parents may struggle to control.
“No one’s suffering should be turned into entertainment, and no child should have to watch another person’s self-destructive behaviour or violence on their own phone,” Kilpi said.
He said parents need to know what their children are doing online and what kind of material they are being exposed to, but argued that responsibility cannot be left to families alone.
Kilpi pointed to the National Coalition Party’s proposal to restrict social media use for children under the age of 15 as one possible way of reducing exposure to harmful content.
Limnell, meanwhile, stressed that the issue also concerns the business models and incentive structures of online platforms.
“Technology should serve people, not turn their suffering into a commodity,” he said.