Tim Loughton
Main Page: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)Department Debates - View all Tim Loughton's debates with the Home Office
(6 years, 11 months ago)
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Amber Rudd
We do stand up to extremism; we stand up to it in our own communities. We stand up to it as the Prime Minister did when she criticised the President for doing the retweeting that we are discussing today.
The right hon. Lady is absolutely right about trying to clean up the online community. That is where so much of the battle takes place, which is why the Government are focused on making sure we take these things down. That is also why our relationship with the US is so important. When I called for a roundtable of the internet giants after the first terrorist attack, in March, what we got was the UK representatives coming. It was only with the support of the US that we were able to get the Global Internet Forum set up, which is based in San Francisco. Being able to work at the highest levels with our US friends to get action taken is the best way to achieve such outcomes, and I urge the right hon. Lady to bear that in mind.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
About a month ago, the most popular man in the world was a last-day employee of Twitter who unplugged the account of the President of the United States. Was he not right? If Twitter is genuine in its commitment to fight hate crime online, it should have no hesitance in taking down the Twitter account of the first citizen of the US, as it would that of any other citizen of the world who peddled such hate crime.
Amber Rudd
I am sure that the chief executive of Twitter will have heard the interesting suggestion from my hon. Friend, and we will leave it to Twitter to decide what action to take.