Hungary’s conservative NGO Foundation for a Protected Society (VDTA) is initiating new legislation to protect the rights of internet users facing increasingly dishonest practices by multinational corporate networks, lawyer Máté Tóth has revealed.
“Digital platforms (Facebook, Youtube, etc …) operated by global giants and other services of these companies that affect the daily lives of user, including messaging services, receive special attention in social dialogue and in the legislative work of Hungary and the European Union,” Tóth said.
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He added, however, that regulation of these services is slow at both national and EU levels, while the operation of these global online platforms and services is characterized by a number of adverse events, non-transparent practices and low levels of consumer enforcement.
“Their initiative responds to the first problem as a necessary and immediate minimum of consumer protection,” Tóth explained. “It is considered that the adoption of the Platform Act should not wait until the legislation of the European Union, nor does it conflict with its subject matter, the Platform Act is only an extension of existing consumer rights,” he added.
The aim of the Platform Act is to prevent service providers from treating Hungarian users in an unacceptable way, ignoring them and refusing to provide them with information and services, until such a time that these fundamental services are regulated in part nationally and in part by the European Union.
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“It is common ground that it is necessary to regulate giants providing global online services in Hungary and Europe, but the complexity of the regulatory work should not lead to Hungarian users being harmed,”, he added.
The Budapest-based VDTA — its name itself suggesting a mirror image of Soros’ Open Society Foundations — describes itself as pro-life and the defender of traditional national and family values.
