Counter-Disinformation Unit: Israel and Palestine

Lord Archbishop of York Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

On 11 October, shortly after the commencement of hostilities, the Secretary of State for DSIT convened a meeting of social media platforms. These included Google, YouTube, Meta, X, Snap and TikTok. She made her expectation very clear that not only would illegal content be rapidly and urgently removed but authoritative content would be promoted to create more clarity around what is accurate content in this fast-moving and difficult situation. Those meetings are ongoing daily at official level and are accompanied by detailed correspondence on the acts of those platforms.

[The Archbishop of York]

My Lords, it is good to hear that the Government are engaging with the social media platforms on this incredibly serious issue. Twitter has most aptly been renamed X, but without irony: one goes into this area with great caution, as it is distressing and nasty. I am told that X is currently laying off people whose job it is to monitor and remove posts that contain disinformation. Given this, and given that we have made progress in looking at social media platforms, what are we doing to require them to do this other than simply engaging with them?

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

I absolutely agree with the most reverend Primate about the seriousness and horror of the situation. On requiring social media companies to act, the Online Safety Bill will become law in a matter of days; it places much more rigorous requirements on the social media companies to remove content which is illegal and is harmful to children and to have only content that is consistent with their published terms of service.