Online safety laws unsatisfactory, minister says
UK laws on internet safety are “very uneven” and “unsatisfactory”, Technology Secretary Peter Kyle has said, following calls from campaigners to tighten the rules.
On Saturday, Ian Russell, the father of Molly Russell, who took her own life at 14 after seeing harmful content online, said the UK was “going backwards” on the issue.
In a note to the PM, Mr Russell argued that the Online Safety Act, which aims to force tech giants to receive more responsibility for their sites’ content, needed fixing and said a “responsibility of worry” should be imposed on the firms.
Speaking to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, Kyle expressed his “frustration” with the Act, which was passed by the previous Conservative government in 2023.
The Conservative government had originally included in the legislation plans to compel social media companies to remove some “legal-but-harmful” content, such as posts promoting eating disorders.
However the proposal triggered a backlash from critics, including the current Conservative chief Kemi Badenoch, who were concerned it could navigator to censorship.
In July 2022, Badenoch, who was not then a minister, said the statement was in “no fit state to become law” adding: “We should not be legislating for hurt feelings.”
Another Conservative MP, David Davis, said it risked “the biggest accidental curtailment of free talk in modern history”.
The schedule was dropped for grown-up social media users and instead companies were required to provide users more control to filter out content they did not desire to view. The law still expects companies to protect children from legal-but-harmful content.
Kyle said the section on legal-but-harmful content had been taken out of the statement adding: “So I inherited a landscape where we have a very uneven, unsatisfactory legislative settlement.”
He did not commit to making changes to the current legislation but said he was “very open-minded” on the subject.
He also said the act contained some “very excellent powers” he was using to “assertively” tackle recent safety concerns and that in the coming months ministers would get the powers to make sure online platforms were providing age-appropriate content.
Companies that did not comply with the law would face “very strident” sanctions, he said.
Following the interview, a Whitehall source told the BBC the government was not planning to repeal the Online Safety Act, or pass a second act, but to work within what ministers depend are its limitations.
Ministers are not ruling out further legislation but wanted “to be agile and quick” to keep up with quick-moving trends, a source said.
In his note, Ian Russell argued that “ominous” changes in the tech industry put greater pressure on the government to act.
He said Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Meta which owns Facebook and Instagram, and Elon Musk, owner of the social media site X, were “at the leading edge of a wholesale recalibration of the industry”.
He accused Zuckerberg of moving away from safety towards a “laissez-faire, anything-goes model” and “back towards the harmful content that Molly was exposed to”.
Earlier this week, Zuckerberg said Meta would be getting rid of truth checkers, and instead adopt a structure – already introduced by X – of allowing users to add “throng notes” to social media posts they deemed to be untrue.
This marked a transformation from Meta’s previous way, introduced in 2016, whereby third event moderators would check posts on Facebook and Instagram that appeared to be untrue or misleading.
Content flagged as inaccurate would be moved lower in users’ feeds and accompanied by labels offering viewers more information on the subject.
Defending the recent structure, Zuckerberg said moderators were “too politically biased” and it was “period to get back to our roots around free expression”.
The step comes as Meta seeks to enhance relations with incoming US President Donald Trump who has previously accused the business of censoring correct-wing voices.
Zuckerberg said the transformation – which only applies in the US – would cruel content moderators would “catch less impoverished stuff” but would also reduce the number of “innocent” posts being removed.
Responding to Russell’s criticism, a Meta spokesperson told the BBC there was “no transformation to how we treat content that encourages suicide, self-injury, and eating disorders” and said the business would “continue to use our automated systems to scan for that high-severity content”.
Asked about the transformation, Kyle said the announcement was “an American statement for American service users” adding: “There is one thing that has not changed and that is the law of this land.”
“If you arrive and operate in this country you abide by the law, and the law says illegal content must be taken down,” he said.
Rules in the Online Safety Act, due to arrive into force later this year, compel social media firms to display that they are removing illegal content – such as kid sexual abuse, material inciting violence and posts promoting or facilitating suicide.
The law also says companies have to protect children from harmful material including pornography, material promoting self-damage, bullying and content encouraging risky stunts.
Platforms will be expected to adopt “age assurance technologies” to prevent children from seeing harmful content.
The law also requires companies to receive action against illegal, state-sponsored disinformation. If their services are likely to be accessed by children they should also receive steps to protect users against misinformation.
