Online Anonymity and Anonymous Abuse

Rosie Winterton Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak in this debate on what is a growing concern for me, my constituents and Members across the House. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) on securing this debate.

Social media platforms have connected us in a way that no one would have thought possible. From rapid instant messaging to sharing content on our everyday lives, we are immersed in readily accessible information and news in a way that our parents would have only dreamed of. In the past two decades, this immersion in an always on and always connected world has had another consequence. A study by the Turing Institute on online abuse in 2019 estimates that up to 40% of people in the UK have seen or been exposed to abusive content, and 10% to 20% have been targeted by abusive content. Worse still, that same year, Oxford Internet Surveys found that 27% of respondents had seen contents or imagery that were either cruel or hateful and that 10% had received abusive emails.

The ethnic breakdown makes for even more depressing reading: 41% of black respondents received abusive emails compared with just 7% of white respondents. That should come as no surprise to Members who witness this kind of content on a daily basis. They know all too well the sheer scale and impact that this abuse can have, particularly as this abuse is often anonymous and spread by accounts with peculiar user names with either eggs or silhouettes as profile pictures. While we must protect freedom of expression, there should be the same level of accountability for someone who commits abuse online as there is for someone who verbally abuses a person on the street. I know the strength of feeling across this issue in my own area, which is why I am supporting Coventry Youth Activists’ campaign for a change in Facebook’s policy so that it recognises hate speech and discrimination specifically targeting disabled people. At the moment, that form of discrimination is reported under the “other” category, which makes it seem acceptable and less important than other types of abuse. Tech giants can and must do more to protect the rights of their users to feel safe, both online and in their everyday lives, and their users’ free expression should not mean that they are free from consequences of their action. Social media companies can absolutely do more to make the online environment safer. They have the tools at their disposal, so do this Government. If the tech giants will not take action on it, it is up to the Government to give the regulators the resources and teeth they need to take appropriate actions to safeguard all users, so that social media platforms can be a place for people to truly feel safe.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

No. 33 has withdrawn, so we are moving to our final speaker from the Back Benches, Christine Jardine.

--- Later in debate ---

[Siobhan Baillie]

I have been asked to be brief, so I will. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing the debate to go ahead. They rightly challenged me as to whether there should be another debate led by me on this subject in a matter of months, but given that it was oversubscribed and given the passion that we have heard today, I think they can see the importance. I thank the sponsors, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) and the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams).

We heard the Minister rightly recognise the calls for verification, although we did not quite hear about the steps that could be taken and the importance of anonymity. I hope that the Minister and the DCMS team will meet me and a small number of Members to discuss that further, and perhaps set up a meeting with the tech companies so that we can talk that through. My thanks to everybody who has contributed; I am really chuffed with the support today.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered online anonymity and anonymous abuse.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

We will have a very short, two-minute suspension to make the necessary arrangements, and then move swiftly on to the next debate.