Welcome to the latest Carnegie UK Online Harms update where we bring together the latest news, research and developments relating to Online Harms policy in the UK and further afield to help campaigners, advocates and policy folk stay connected.
This week, the Online Safety Bill passed its Second Reading, albeit after a much shorter than scheduled debate. Committee stage of the Bill will begin once the new session of Parliament has begun.
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What’s been happening?
The road to regulation: The second reading of the Online Safety Bill
The Government set out its position ahead of Second Reading here and, focusing on the protection of children, in a joint op-ed from the Secretary of State and the Children’s Commissioner. The full transcript of the Second Reading debate can be found here. Overall the Government is likely to be pleased with the debate, which demonstrated cross-party consensus on the need for legislation; and remarkably, on a day of intense partisan activity, the House did not divide. This broad consensus may be demonstrating the benefits of Pre-Legislative Scrutiny.
The debate ran for just over two hours – a slot much reduced due to delays caused by the PM’s statement to the Commons earlier that day – and many MPs with an interest were consequently not able to speak. Issues raised by those who did participate included: the need for a more systemic approach; lack of clear definitions and the amount of detail that will be left to secondary legislation; risks that the categorisation of companies will allow harms on smaller platforms to flourish; the extent that the Secretary of State’s powers will impact on Ofcom’s independence; and gaps in the Bill, including mis/disinformation, protections for those suffering from epilepsy, action on cross-platform harms, particularly to children, and risks from emerging technologies, including the metaverse.
Some speakers raised concerns about the impact of the Bill on free speech – something which the Secretary of State, in her opening statement, was keen to emphasise would be better protected under the legislation than currently – and on the protections for journalism content, but neither of these issues proved significant enough to force a division on the Bill. (Notably, Steve Baker MP co-authored an op-ed on the subject on the day of Second Reading but didn’t speak in the debate.)
For further reading on some of the issues raised in the debate, you can refer back to Second Reading briefings from charities and campaign groups, including from: a coalition of children’s charities (on why the Bill is needed) and the NSPCC (whose concerns about “breadcrumbing” were shared by many MPs); Barnardo’s (delays to introduction of protections for children from porn); IWF (CSEA); Clean Up the Internet (anonymity and user verification); Full Fact (mis/disinformation and media literacy); and Glitch (the ongoing concerns about the lack of specific protections for women and girls, also raised by the End Violence Against Women and Girls coalition). The House of Commons Library also produced a briefing paper and an accompanying reading list ahead of the debate.
The programme motions, which included a deadline of 30 June for Committee stage, and carry-over motion, to enable the Bill to continue its passage in the next session, were all agreed.
In a tweet before Second Reading, Nikki De Costa (former Director of Legislative Affairs at No 10) forecast that the Bill “... won’t get to Royal Assent before Feb ‘23. In cttee till end June, report and 3R likely to be together, w/c 8 July. Would not expect Lords 2R till Sept. Will run till at least Feb. Then ping-pong.” Meanwhile, this analysis from Conservative Home editor Paul Goodman looks at some of the Parliamentary challenges ahead, particularly for a Bill that is likely to be heavily amended.
Online Safety Bill: General commentary and campaigns
The NSPCC has published its analysis of the Online Safety Bill with a series of recommendations to make it stronger in protecting children; in a strongly worded open letter to the largest pornography sites in the UK, a coalition of charities and child safety experts has said the harm being done to children was so severe that the issue could not wait to be addressed as part of the Online Safety Bill; and another coalition of charities, campaigning to #KeepKidsOffPorn, has sent a letter to the Prime Minister calling for amendments to the Bill to ensure the law's timeliness, effectiveness and workability.
Safer Schools have produced a short rundown on what the Bill is and what it will do to protect children, alongside a one page graphic; and BBC Science focus have also published an overview.
James Thomson, chairman of the City of London Corporation’s police authority board, said the Online Safety Bill would have a significant impact on tackling the growing number of scams targeting people on their mobile phones, computers and other devices. Meanwhile, Rocio Concha from Which? has written for Politics Home on the need to further strengthen the Bill to protect users from fraud and scams.
A new IET report on “Safeguarding the Metaverse” identifies a number of recommendations for policymakers, including better future-proofing the Online Safety Bill and putting more onus on the design of virtual spaces rather than users reporting problems.
Mishcon de Reya LLP have produced a video recording of their recent Online Safety Bill event which featured panellists Professor Lorna Woods, Dame Margaret Hodge MP, Mark Bunting, Director of Online Safety Policy at Ofcom; and Sanjay Bhandari, Chair of Kick It Out. Mishcon de Reya lawyer Harry Eccles-Williams also features on the Powerscourt Friday Fix Short podcast. Other law firms’ responses have included: analysis from BCLP and Morrison & Foerster; and Farrer & Co’s The Price of Fame - The Online Safety Bill and Big Tech.
Road to regulation: Other developments
For a preview of related activity in the next Parliamentary session, Queen’s Speech documentation includes details on legislation for: Digital markets reform, Bill of Rights (Human Rights), Modern Slavery, Counter-terrorism strategy: ‘Protect duty’ and an Economic Crime Bill.
Other recent activity by Parliamentarians on this topic has included: Damien Collins’ articles on the impact on content moderators of their work (co-written with Sean Casten and Phumzile van Damme); and on online competition laws. Conservative's Dr Luke Evans MP has called for every social media company to appoint an ‘algorithm tsar’, to improve transparency. Lord Allan, previously of Facebook and now a Lib Dem peer, is publishing a series of blogs on the Online Safety Bill, available here.
A Sky News investigation has highlighted significant gaps in understanding amongst the police as to what information they can seek from big tech firms, particularly for encrypted messaging apps.
In other news from the platforms: Youtube CEO Susan Wojcicki has been interviewed by YouTuber Ludwig Ahgren and discussed a range of topics, including the platform’s ranking system, algorithm and recent design changes. Meta has published the results from its independent “Assessment of Expanding End-to-End Encryption Protects Fundamental Human Rights”, but these have been criticised, particularly by child safety campaigners for the impact on CSEA; Meta has also announced the launch of their Family Center with increased parental supervision tools on Instagram and in VR.
Researchers have found shortcomings in Instagram’s protection of children, finding that the platform is failing to remove accounts that attract hundreds of sexualised comments for posting pictures of children in swimwear or partial clothing, even after they are flagged to it through the in-app reporting tool.
A new blog from PUBLIC summarises insights from their recent stakeholder engagement activities on tackling illegal harms impacting young people online, picking up various trends as well as barriers, including capability gaps and issues with the operational environment.
Harms to democracy: President Obama recently reflected on the role that system and processes play in amplifying harm in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic on the future of democracy: “what you now have is these product designs where, in a non-transparent way that we don’t have much insight into, a series of editorial choices are essentially being made that undermine our democracy and oftentimes, when combined with any kind of ethno-nationalism or misogyny or racism, can be fatal. And that is the media ecosystem that we now are occupying. And the good news is I actually think that at every juncture, every time we’ve gotten new media, we’ve had this kind of churn, and then we’ve come up with rules to try to figure out: How do we fix it?”
A global coalition of civil society organisations is calling for platforms to do more to enable free-flow of information in crisis zones; their statement claims “It has become increasingly clear that platforms have followed the same playbook in Ukraine as they have elsewhere: surface-level or extractive relationships with civil society; insufficient support for local language and lack of understanding of context; and responsiveness to media pressure, not civil society pressure or human rights concerns.”
Developments on the Digital Market Act continue: here’s Euractiv’s update on the latest changes; and Freshfields’ analysis of the proposals. Revision of the EU’s disinformation code has been delayed due to consideration of the impact of the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, in France, the French data protection authority is following up on its decision a couple of weeks' ago that the Google analytics transfers were contrary to the GDPR; and in a case referred to the CJEU from Germany, an Opinion has been published in a right to be forgotten case. Hamburg’s data protection authority has ruled on Google’s cookies.
In Canada, a new Bill has been introduced which aims to reduce bargaining imbalances between digital platforms and news outlets in terms of how digital platforms allow news content to be accessed and shared on their platforms.
Linked to their recent report (see above), CCDH is calling on further signatories to their open letter to the major platforms to demand action on Hidden Hate.
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