Asked by: Peter Lamb (Labour - Crawley)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, if he will have discussions with Meta on removing monkey abuse content from its platforms.
Answered by Feryal Clark - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
Government ministers and officials regularly discuss online safety matters with stakeholders including online platforms such as Meta.
Under the Online Safety Act’s ‘illegal content duties’, social media platforms including Meta have duties to implement measures to tackle animal abuse content and remove it from their services. Ofcom is the UK’s independent regulator for online safety responsible for regulating services and taking enforcement action as appropriate. It has published recommendations for how providers should fulfil their illegal content duties in codes of practice and documentation. These include specific provisions about animal abuse content. These duties took effect on 17 March.
Asked by: Peter Lamb (Labour - Crawley)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps he is taking with Cabinet colleagues to encourage social media companies to tackle animal abuse content online.
Answered by Feryal Clark - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
Animal abuse content is horrific, and social media companies must do more to tackle it.
Social media platforms and search services have duties to tackle animal abuse content and implement safety-by-design features under the Online Safety Act.
Ofcom – the independent regulator - has published recommendations for how providers should tackle such content under their ‘illegal content duties’.
These duties took effect on 17 March and Ofcom have strong enforcement powers to hold companies accountable for failing to meet their obligations.