Online Safety Bill

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 1st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is clear from the last speech that we must do much more to protect impressionable young people from the torrent of racism, extremism and dangerous conspiracy theories online. Sites like Facebook and Twitter fuel division, anger and extremism, which can lead to threats and violence. Small sites like 4Chan, Odysee and Minds do not even have the third layer of the so-called triple shield. People are routinely targeted, intimidated, bullied and harassed, as we have heard in so many speeches during this debate. This has a terrible impact on public debate, let alone mental health.

Research by the Antisemitism Policy Trust revealed that there are two anti-Semitic tweets per year for every Jewish person in the UK. That report was before Elon Musk’s takeover relaxed the rules. As we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, women get it worse, with all sorts of disgusting abuse and even rape threats. Yet the Government have so far not accepted calls for an Ofcom code on violence against women and girls. Anyone of any age can set up a Twitter account with just an email address, giving them access to hardcore pornography. Future generations will be amazed that we allowed this lawless wild west to develop.

Sites like Twitter allow the repeated publication of completely false, defamatory and made-up images, making completely unfounded allegations of the most vile behaviour. It ignores complaints, and even when you to try to take them up and can show clearly how posts break its rules, it will not do anything about it. Twitter’s entire business model is based on fuelling argument, controversy and anger, which obviously leads to abuse and in some cases threats of violence. This can become addictive, leading to a terrible impact on people’s mental health.

People abroad are making billions out of poisoning public debate and making the mental health of vulnerable people worse. Imagine it: who would be allowed to set up a business to deliver anonymous hate mail about other members of the public through people’s front doors, which is essentially what Twitter is able to do? Why are we allowing billionaires abroad to decide what young people in the UK are subjected to, instead of Parliament, which is accountable to the public, setting rules that are properly understood?

You do not need to be paranoid to ask why hostile countries might use social media to undermine western societies with extremism and violent argument. This is not about limiting free speech or censorship—remember, these sites already curate what we see anyway—but implementing proper systems of age verification and holding the executives to account when they break the rules.

I share the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Fall, about whether we really need anonymity on social media in the UK. Freedom of speech should not allow threats of violence or rape, or disgusting abuse. In any event, people have the freedom to say what they like, within the bounds of the law, but that does not mean they should not be held responsible for it. Nor is it true to say that this would affect whistleblowers in countries like ours. The people who make rape threats or publish violent abuse are not whistleblowers.

Finally, as the noble Lord, Lord Black, said, the boundaries between newspapers, broadcasters and social media companies are becoming more blurred all the time. Twitter and the rest of them are clearly publishers. They should be held to account for the material on their sites, in the same way as newspapers.

We need to see small, high-harm platforms brought into the scope of category 1 platforms; the re-introduction of risk assessments for legal harms; and a reversal of the current fudge on anonymity, with at the very least fines for platforms that are unable to know who their customers are. We need to look again at the status of these companies as publishers. Finally, we need to see action on search engines, including Google, which largely escape any actions in this Bill.