Electronic Media: False Information Debate
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Baroness Hussein-Ece
Main Page: Baroness Hussein-Ece (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Hussein-Ece's debates with the Department for Business and Trade
Electronic Media: False Information
Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts(3 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, part of the challenge of addressing the proliferation of misinformation is the large volume of accounts created solely to spread information that is not verifiable and is fake. Often, these accounts are bots, as we call them. Have the Government considered introducing mandatory verification of identity on social media, so that platforms know the identity of all their users without removing their anonymity?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
The noble Baroness raises an interesting point. This will depend very much on the terms of service of those individual platforms, the whole basis of which, as she knows, is to provide that anonymity. We would need a much more detailed discussion about them and about whether individuals should be identified. However, she is right that the proliferation of bots is a dangerous issue, and we need to be aware of it, not only in the UK but in state-sponsored attacks on our democracy.