The Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Commission believes it’s time to regulate what people can and can’t say on social networking platforms.

Director Ashwin Raj was on FBC TV’s 4 The Record last night and said it’s worrying to see the type of comments being made on sites such as facebook where people have free reign to post as they see fit.

Raj says the government should now consider monitoring for hate speech, discrimination and any other breach of the law via social media.

“The State needs to start thinking about the notion of discrimination in the social media. We’re looking at mainstream media, but I think it’s time we start seriously looking at the damage social media does.”

He says other – larger jurisdictions like Germany are already looking into this and Fiji can’t afford to let people spew hate speech without facing legal ramifications.

370,000 people in Fiji are estimated to have facebook accounts while 43% of the population has access to the internet.