When Facebook has more subscribers than Christianity, it is hard to deny the significance and reach of social media companies and the online world more widely. Collectively, the most important players in the online world have the ability to frame the political agenda, shape the views and behaviours of their users and even influence democratic outcomes. It is therefore welcome that the Government have brought forward the Online Safety Bill, which was debated in Parliament last week. The Bill goes further than any other nation has done so far, bringing to heel the excesses of social media companies through a regulatory model.
Through this new framework, which will confer on social media companies a duty of care to protect their users, the Bill will make a clear difference: it will protect all social media users by preventing harmful or illegal content appearing in the first place through a statutory obligation and non-compliance will come with significant financial and criminal consequences. Many issues affecting young people across Newbury – depression, self-harm, misogynistic attitudes towards women – derive from the world that our young people encounter online and this Bill will help tackle some of the pernicious online roots of these deep societal issues.
It is also worth noting that there is a clear precedent to this approach. The Health and Safety At Work Act 1974, the Managing Health and Safety at Work Regs 1999 conferred similar duties on employers to design and implement safe systems of work – in ways that were quite novel at the time but slashed the occurrence of workplace injury since those laws were passed. This shows that this model can work.
Last year, as a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee, I took part in an evidence session with representatives of the major online platforms. These representatives gave evidence about the safeguards that were already in place to restrict or removal harmful content online. But, it was striking that these limits rested on the goodwill of the platform, and not in legislation. Through the Online Safety Bill, the Government is therefore placing these safeguards on a statutory footing, protecting our children and the most vulnerable in society from the dangers of the online world.
As ever, questions still remain about aspects of the Bill: how we ensure the adequacy of OFCOM as a regulator? Recent events have shown that regulators do not always have the teeth to bring to heel powerful organisations with deep pockets.
Nonetheless, these are questions that will be ironed out as the Bill progresses through the House and, at this point, I am proud that the UK is leading the nation on this area of policy. Germany has similar legislation, but their Network Enforcement Act requires social media platforms to remove hateful content in a way that is monitored and controlled by the State and said companies have no duty to put in place system to prevent their publication to begin with. This makes the UK a leader in the field, which will many across Newbury will, I am sure, welcome.