Social media companies cannot escape scrutiny when it comes to improving the safety of MPs
Editorial: It’s clear action has to be taken. But the response needs to be workable, as anonymity can provide vital protection to whistleblowers and human rights campaigners
Interviewed on Sky News on Sunday morning about the killing of her friend and fellow Essex MP David Amess, Priti Patel suggested one response from the government might be to end the anonymity allowed to social media users.
Such a ban has long been supported by several MPs, including Diane Abbott, Margaret Hodge and Chris Bryant. Many politicians, particularly women, are routinely subjected to vile abuse and physical threats which, if made without the cowardly cloak of anonymity, would amount to a criminal offence.
“We can’t carry on like this,” the home secretary told Trevor Phillips. “We want to make some big changes.” However, by the time she gave her second interview of the morning an hour later – to the BBC’s Andrew Marr – she had rowed back a little. This came after Lisa Nandy, the shadow foreign secretary, had pointed out on the same two programmes that online anonymity offers vital protection to whistleblowers and human rights campaigners in places such as Afghanistan, Hong Kong and Belarus. For this reason, Ms Patel conceded that any such curbs would have to be “proportionate and balanced”.
While MPs deserve more protection from those who attack them online, any response must be workable. A “real name” policy in the UK might deter some internet trolls, but to be effective it would have to be introduced globally. Some of the racist messages directed at the three England footballers who missed penalties in the Euro 2020 final were traced to other countries. Those guilty of abuse will probably find ways to get around new curbs, such as the use of virtual private networks, which hide the user’s location. The comprehensive action needed will require online platforms to take a much more proactive approach to preventing offensive posts in the first place, as well as removing them more quickly.
Another issue on which the actions of these platforms are open to question is terrorism. Ms Patel threatened to fine social media companies if they refuse to grant the security services access to encrypted messages, telling Times Radio: “Tech companies cannot carry on hiding behind the façade of protection of privacy. It is unacceptable”.
She was right to point out that politicians are not the only victims of the failure of social media companies to regulate themselves properly – an era that even the tech giants themselves acknowledge is finally coming to an end.
However, the government is needlessly dragging its feet over its long-overdue Online Safety Bill, which featured only as a draft measure in the Queen’s Speech in May and so will not become law in the current session. It will eventually bring in a statutory duty of care, forcing companies to take more responsibility for the safety of users and to tackle harm caused by content or activity on their platforms. The regulator Ofcom will have enforcement powers, including the right to impose fines of up to £18m or 10 per cent of annual global turnover, whichever is greater. Wrongly, ministers appear to have gone cool on plans set out in a white paper last year to “impose liability on individual members of senior management”.
There are genuine doubts about whether Ofcom will be armed with the resources and powers it will need – for example, to interrogate the algorithms used by the firms as well as to oversee the content. The police or Ofcom cannot be expected to investigate thousands of complaints; far better for the regulator to agree standards with the social media companies in advance on what they will allow in areas such as political debate, protecting children, and tackling radicalisation and terrorism.
The advantages of closing the stable door before the horse has bolted are obvious: much distress and harm could, and must, be avoided.