Online Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-19
Topic: Technology
Alexandra Mary Davies-Jones (Labour, Centre-left): I share the hon. Lady’s concern. There is so much more that is simply missing from this Bill, which is why it is just not good enough. We have heard in this debate about a range of omissions from the Bill and the loopholes that, despite the years of delay, have still not been addressed by the Government. I thank hon. Members on both sides of the House for pointing those out. It is a shame that we are not able to address them individually here, but we will probe those valued contributions further in the Bill Committee Despite huge public interest and a lengthy prelegislative scrutiny process, the Government continue to ignore many key recommendations, particularly around defining and regulating both illegal and legal but harmful content online. The very nature of the Bill and its heavy reliance on secondary legislation to truly flesh out the detail leaves much to be desired. We need to see action now if we are truly to keep people safe online Most importantly, this Bill is an opportunity, and an important one at that, to decide the kind of online world our children grow up in. I know from many across the House that growing up online as children do now is completely unimaginable. When I was young, we played Snake on a Nokia 3310, and had to wait for the dial-up and for people to get off the phone in order to go online and access MSN, but for people today access to the internet, social media and everything that brings is a fundamental part of their lives Once again, however, far too much detail, and the specifics of how this legislation will fundamentally change the user experience, is simply missing from the Bill. When it comes to harmful content that is not illegal, the Government have provided no detail. Despite the Bill’s being years in the making, we are no closer to understanding the impact it will have on users The Bill in its current draft has a huge focus on the tools for removing and moderating harmful content, rather than ensuring that design features are in place to make services systematically safer for all of us. The Government are thus at real risk of excluding children from being able to participate in the digital world freely and safely. The Bill must not lock children out of services they are entitled to use; instead, it must focus on making those services safe by design I will push the Minister on this particular point. We are all eager to hear what exact harms platforms will have to take steps to address and mitigate. Will it be self-harm? Will it perhaps be content promoting eating disorders, racism, homophobia, antisemitism and misogyny? One of the key problems with the Bill is the failure to make sure that the definitions of "legal but harmful" content are laid out within it. Will the Minister therefore commit to amending the Bill to address this and to allow for proper scrutiny? As we have heard, the Government have also completely failed to address what stakeholders term the problem of breadcrumbing. I would be grateful if the Minister outlined what steps the Government will be taking to address this issue, as there is clearly a loophole in the Bill that would allow this harmful practice to continue. As we have heard, the gaps in the Bill, sadly, do not end there. Women and girls are disproportionately likely to be affected by online abuse and harassment. Online violence against women and girls is defined as including but not limited to "intimate image abuse, online harassment, the sending of unsolicited explicit images, coercive ‘sexting’, and the creation and sharing of ‘deepfake’ pornography." This Bill is an important step forward but it will need significant strengthening to make online spaces safe for women and girls. While we welcome the steps by the Government to include cyber-flashing in the Bill, it must go further in other areas. Misogyny should be included as a harm to adults that online platforms have a duty to prevent from appearing on them. As colleagues will be aware, Instagram has been completely failing to tackle misogynistic abuse sent via direct message. The Centre for Countering Digital Hate has exposed what it terms an "epidemic of misogynistic abuse", 90% of which has been completely and utterly ignored by Instagram, even when it has been reported to moderators. The Government must see sense and put violence against women and girls into the Bill, and it must also form a central pillar of regulation around legal but harmful content. Will the Minister therefore commit to at least outlining the definitions of "legal but harmful" content, both for adults and children, in the Bill Another major omission from the Bill in as currently drafted is its rather arbitrary categorisation of platforms based on size versus harm. As mentioned by many hon. Members, the categorisation system as it currently stands will completely fail to address some of the most extreme harms on the internet. Thanks to the fantastic work of organisations such as Hope not Hate and the Antisemitism Policy Trust, we know that smaller platforms such as 4chan and BitChute have significant numbers of users who are highly motivated to promote extremely dangerous content. The Minister must accept that his Department has been completely tone-deaf on this particular point, and—he must listen to what hon. Members have said today—its decision making utterly inexplicable. Rather than an arbitrary size cut-off, the regulator must instead use risk levels to determine which category a platform should fall into so that harmful and dangerous content does not slip through the net. Exactly when will the Minister’s Department publish more information on the detail around this categorisation system? Exactly what does he have to say to those people, including many Members here today, who have found themselves the victim of abusive content that has originated on these hate-driven smaller platforms? How will this Bill change their experience of being online? I will save him the energy, because we all know the real answer: it will do little to change the situation This Bill was once considered a once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve internet safety for good, and Labour wants to work with the Government to get this right. Part of our frustration is due to the way in which the Government have failed to factor technological change and advancement—which, as we all know, and as we have heard today, can be extremely rapid—into the workings of this Bill. While the Minister and I disagree on many things, I am sure that we are united in saying that no one can predict the future, and that is not where my frustrations lie. Instead, I feel that the Bill has failed to address issues that are developing right now—from developments in online gaming to the expansion of the metaverse. These are complicated concepts but they are also a reality that we as legislators must not shy away from The Government have repeatedly said that the Bill’s main objective is to protect children online, and of course it goes without saying that Labour supports that. Yet with the Bill being so restricted to user-to-user services, there are simply too many missed opportunities to deal with areas where children, and often adults, are likely to be at risk of harm. Online gaming is a space that is rightly innovative and fast-changing, but the rigid nature of how services have been categorised will soon mean that the Bill is outdated long before it has had a chance to have a positive impact. The same goes for the metaverse While of course Labour welcomes the Government’s commitment to prevent under-18s from accessing pornography online, the Minister must be realistic. A regime that seeks to ban rather than prevent is unlikely to ever be able to keep up with the creative, advanced nature of the tech industry. For that reason, I must press the Minister on exactly how this Bill will be sufficiently flexible and future-proofed to avoid a situation whereby it is outdated by the time it finally receives Royal Assent. We must make sure that we get this right, and the Government know that they could and can do more. I therefore look forward to the challenge and to working with colleagues across the House to strengthen this Bill throughout its passage.