Social Media: News

Baroness Worthington Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Worthington (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, on securing this excellent debate. As is always the case when one speaks late in such a rich debate, nearly everything that I would have said has already been said, and far more eloquently than I would have been able to do. Therefore, I will keep my comments brief.

I want to reiterate what many people have said already: that the current use of social media and internet platforms is an extraordinary new development and feature of our everyday life. The two-way nature of these platforms is extraordinary and unlike anything that society has ever witnessed before. We interact with information in ways that are often thought through but sometimes not enough time is spent in thinking about the consequences. We leave behind us a breadcrumb trail of information that can be gathered, harnessed, analysed and used for commercial profit.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, pointed out, these platforms can also bring huge benefits. They are not popular for no reason. An enormous amount of effort has gone into making them useful, and they often have huge beneficial consequences for the way we live our lives. That said, there is clearly a need for us as a society to think about our laws and about whether they are keeping pace with the current use of these platforms.

There is a unique aspect to the anonymity afforded by many of the providers, as some previous speakers have pointed out. Hiding under the cover of anonymity, it is possible to spread hatred, propaganda and abuse. However, it is also true to say that human nature dictates that we find people with real identities far more persuasive, and that has led to a new trend in fake personalities or fake accounts being created. Such accounts can be created very easily.

These platforms have become phenomenally popular and have achieved extremely high levels of penetration because of the ease of their use. By their very nature, it is easy and quick to set up accounts, and a low level of checks and balances is applied. That means that it is now possible to create and control a relatively small number of accounts. Co-ordinated action then leads to stories being published, then republished, “liked” and followed, and they, in turn, are picked up by algorithms that have been designed to make our news feeds and information flows more relevant to our interests.

Therefore, an extraordinary facilitating action of these platforms enables fake news and other propaganda to achieve vast audiences. It is now possible for news to circumnavigate the globe almost instantly. In the time that it takes for something to be checked and then challenged, lives are ruined and reputations can be irreparably damaged. These platforms have also learned how to attract our attention and generate the advertising revenues on which they thrive. The more outrageous and enticing the headlines, the more likely it is that they will receive attention.

There are obviously many other aspects that require our serious attention, and I just want to think about some solutions. There is clearly a need for us to acknowledge that self-regulation is insufficient. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, gave the example of children being expected to flag content that they find distressing, but that is clearly not sufficient. It is very important that we now expend public money and effort on providing a neutral and independent set of checks and balances on this entire industry. That is not without precedent. There are many people who are able to devote themselves to creating the same sorts of tools that have been used to combat advertising fraud or maximise advertising revenue, and they can be brought together in the public good and be funded from the public purse to create a check and a balance against the needs of the industry.

Education and keeping ourselves informed is a huge responsibility that we all must bear. It is possible to move away from the household brands and find alternatives with similarly interesting names, such as the Epic browser, the Comodo Dragon browser and the DuckDuckGo browser, which enable you to have a very different experience of the web in which you are not leaving behind a hugely valuable data trail and can insulate yourself slightly from some of its worst aspects. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, talked about unionising users, which is an exciting idea that should be explored. With the great power we have in using these platforms, we should be able to exert pressure back on them.

Digital Understanding

Baroness Worthington Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Worthington (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I would like to add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, for her influential work and for introducing this important debate.

I begin by stating that I am a technological optimist. Advances in information and communications technologies have brought great benefits to humanity, with potential for many more to follow. Much of the utility of the super-computers that now surround us has been provided to us by companies whose programming skills have made them household names. As their usefulness has grown, so too has the value of these companies, to the point now where they are the mostly highly capitalised companies on the planet, replacing oil companies. The companies with the highest market valuation are the particular breed through which vast amounts of data pass—data generated by users, which means all of us.

These platform service providers often do not charge for the services they provide, yet their incomes are vast, derived mainly from advertising—and specifically from highly targeted and efficient advertising, the likes of which older forms of broadcast and print media could never deliver. As we go about our digital lives, we leave behind us valuable digital information that can be processed en masse by super-computers, helping to profile us into ever more detailed market segments, defined not just by who we are or what we do, but by how we think and feel.

A mass communications revolution is under way and there will inevitably be negative consequences. We need to ask how these can be minimised. Internet platform providers are not classed as broadcasters since they do not generate original content. This has led to controversies around abuses of copyright and stretched the boundaries between freedom of expression and the rules seeking to govern defamation, incitement to hate and other forms of illegal communication.

As interconnectedness has grown in a concentrated number of platforms, information volumes have also increased. This has led to more curation of the flow of information to improve user experiences. But who decides what improves a user experience? Often, it means keeping content in line with already known preferences. Our natural confirmation biases are being strengthened as our news feeds are curated to show more of what we agree with and less of what we do not. With no requirement to maintain political neutrality, platforms can serve up content which is the equivalent of the entire panel of “Question Time” being populated only by Nigel Farages every week.

In this polarised environment, deliberate misinformation or fake news can spread like wildfire. It can spread naturally if the “click bait” is compelling enough. However, why leave it to chance? It is possible to guarantee a higher circulation of stories—whether real or not—using fake personalities controlled by computers to “like” or “favourite” stories thousands of times so they are picked up by listing algorithms and circulated more broadly.

Algorithms control what we see. Has the line between companies such as Facebook being platforms and publishers been crossed? Are publishers not editors of content? Even if it is an algorithm doing the editing, these algorithms originate somewhere and they express a set of beliefs that shape what we see. They should be open to scrutiny. Transparency is a precursor to understanding.

Increased digital understanding will be necessary before we draw up and maintain a rule book so the benefits of digitalisation are felt by everyone and the incidents of abuse and misuse are minimised. As a group of lawmakers, we have a particular responsibility to educate ourselves. That is why I am delighted that we have created an ad hoc committee to consider artificial intelligence, which, I am sure, under the expert chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, will produce excellent results. I also look forward to the Government’s digital charter and data protection Bill, which will allow this rich debate to continue. There are so many aspects of this debate that we could have covered today, but time is short. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, once again for introducing this debate and I hope it will not be the last of its kind.