Foreign-owned Social Media Companies

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I am not sure that I really understand the noble Viscount’s point. To be media-literate or social media-literate does not stop somebody making inaccurate or offensive comments. The key issue is that we should not say that different rules apply to people on social media. We should look to have public discourse, which is the responsibility of us all, to be at all times courteous and factual, and to conduct debate properly. That is not to say people cannot disagree or debate, or even be offensive. We cannot have what is almost incitement, and people not worrying about what the truth is and what is accurate if it gets a reaction. Sometimes too much of what is being said on social media is designed to get a reaction rather than to help inform people.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, the victims of many of the actions that have led to this tsunami of bad words are being revictimised by that sort of language and the way people are talking. I work with many of them—with small women’s groups, particularly in the north, around Doncaster, Rotherham and Newcastle, that are working still with victims who have been abused and violently treated. Is it not time that all of us said that our main concern has to be for them, and to be working to make sure that social media is not a means of abusing and exploiting vulnerable women?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness makes a profound, wise and appropriate point. A lot of the current issues around social media have arisen on child sexual abuse, and there can be no crime more vile or abhorrent than that. If it is used for political purposes or is somehow stirred up, then I come back to the very point I made at the beginning: we must lower the temperature of the debate, not the tone. We should not seek to use such an abhorrent crime for political purposes but, at all times, try to have a debate that moves the issue forward in a positive way and seeks to protect those who are vulnerable.