Sir Martin Sorrell accuses Google, Facebook, Yahoo & AOL of shirking editorial responsibilities
WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell has spoken out against a host of the world’s largest digital firms; including AOL, Facebook, Google and Yahoo at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Speaking to the guardian’s Mark Sweney Sorrell accused the tech giants of shirking their responsibilities in relation to the content they host through convenient use of semantics, namely referring to themselves as ‘tech’ companies rather than media firms.
Sorrell said: “If you have responsibility for the pipe, you can't ignore the responsibility for the editorial content… you can't abrogate responsibility."
Naturally the highlighted firms are reticent to do so, knowing that this would strip them of their legal protection at a stroke and necessitate the employment of tens of thousands of monitors to oversee content.
Such a radical outcome isn’t likely to affect the businesses in the US but could have implications elsewhere in the world where Google’s standing in particular has taken a knock in recent months over tax evasion, privacy violations and lawsuits relating to the propagation of illegal content.