IT isn’t hard to imagine the outrage if a newsagent started to stock a glossy magazine called “Practical Self-Harm” with the strapline: “This month – some of the goriest ways to cut yourself”.

It would quickly be removed from the shelves, and the police would make their enquiries to both publisher and newsagent.

Yet that was the sort of material that 14-year-old Molly Russell was able to access on Instagram, the photo-sharing social media site that is owned by Facebook. After viewing no end of material glorifying self-harm and suicide, she later killed herself.

But what has happened to Facebook, which last week announced record profits of more than £5billion for the last three months of 2018. Virtually nothing.

None of its executives have been hauled in by the police for questioning.

Its head of global affairs, Sir Nick Clegg, who as Deputy Prime Minister made such an issue of mental health, has been asked to appear before MPs, but he has so far promised little in the way of change.

As for Facebook’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, all we have heard from him is a weaselly protest that people are exaggerating the negative side of the internet as a “network of people takes over from traditional hierarchies”.

Of course, the internet has been a huge power for good over the past quarter century. It has transformed the way in which we shop, read the news and interact with friends.

NO EXCUSE
Most people struggle to imagine what life was like without it.

Yet that is no excuse for social media giants to behave as if the internet were a Wild West, totally beyond regulation or control.

They must not be allowed to act as if they have little responsibility to their users or the public in general.

Indeed in its first guidelines on social media use, unveiled today, the Government says firms have a duty of care to users and that youngsters must be shielded from photos that “normalise” self-harm, suicide and anorexia.

For too long social media firms have been allowed to hide behind the technology that supports their services, claiming critics don’t understand that it can’t be regulated like traditional media. As the former Home Secretary Amber Rudd said a couple of years ago, it is patronising nonsense.

No one needs to understand the internet to understand that it is unacceptable to allow anyone to post whatever they like on a social media site and for the operators of that site to wash their hands of it.

A very simple change in the law would soon stop material like that accessed by Molly Russell appearing online.

That is to redefine social media platforms as publishers, who are one hundred per cent responsible for their content.

At present, they are allowed to escape responsibility by claiming to be mere technology “platforms”. They are claiming, in effect, to be like mere printing presses — rather than, say, like newspapers.

Newspapers, magazines and book publishers bear a heavy responsibility for what they publish. If they lie, print false news or invade people’s privacy they face serious consequences.

But if social media sites carry such material there is no authority overlooking them to keep them in check.

Individuals who post offensive or libellous material on social media are subject to libel and slander laws but they too often escape sanctions as they cannot be traced.

As we have discovered from inquiries in Britain and America, a lot of fake news tweets originate in propaganda factories in Russia.

They have been pumping out material with the explicit purpose of interfering in our elections — aided by Western-based social media sites.

Facebook, Twitter and the like say they are acting to remove offensive material. Since Molly Russell’s death Instagram says it is introducing “sensitivity screens” which would block certain material unless the user specifically chooses to view it.

Facebook has employed “fact-checkers” to detect fake news — although some were reported this week to have given up on the task, complaining the firm had used them merely for “crisis PR”.

It is not enough. If social media platforms were legally responsible for everything appearing on their sites, they would be pretty well obliged to check everything before it was posted for public view.

They cannot reasonably protest that they do not have the technology to do this.

Social media sites should be obliged, too, to set up their own independent regulator, like the Independent Press Standards Organisation which regulates newspapers.

It is absurd that we had the long Leveson Inquiry into the Press, but that it did nothing at all to tackle the internet.

And if social media firms are publishing material in Britain, they should be obliged to base part of their operation in Britain for tax purposes.

At the moment, the tax system is hardly capturing them at all — giving them an unfair advantage over traditional media firms which do pay large amounts of tax here.

This month, Facebook turns 15 — an age that, sadly, Molly Russell never quite reached. It is an age at which we expect adolescents to start taking responsibility for their future.

It is about time Facebook and its fellow social media sites started taking full responsibility for their actions.