2022-02-01
Published today - the Petitions Committee of the House of Commons summarises their view on
How can the Government finally tackle online abuse?
Or you can read the full report:
The petition mentioned in the report and to which they seem primarily to be responding:
"Social media enables us to connect and communicate with other people. However, according to the TV personality and campaigner Bobby Norris, social media also has a “very dark side” – namely, the abuse that many people receive on these platforms. Bobby started a petition on the issue, and this prompted our inquiry into Tackling Online Abuse"
However, the petition that I signed that they quote in their response email was a different petition:
Do not restrict our right to freedom of expression online
"We believe the Government's draft Online Safety Bill poses one of the greatest threats to free speech of any law in the UK in living memory. We are calling on the Government to remove provisions within the Bill which specifically target lawful expression"
"The right to free expression is the foundation of our democracy in the UK. The Online Safety Bill does nothing to help police deal with crime online but will force social media companies to act on lawful speech of any type that Ministers choose. The Government has a duty under human rights law to protect free speech and must remove requirements that specifically target lawful speech from the Bill"
(This petition at time of writing has 12,217 signatures and remains open until the end of May 2022)
I found no discussion in the report surrounding the issue of freedom of expression or human rights law, although there is support that mentions 'freedom of expression':
"Platforms will also be required to protect users' freedom of expression"
The full report mentions that they took views from a number of sources, but I saw no indication of the reasoning supporting their conclusion that some forms of lawful speech are indeed regarded as an appropriate target, other than a vague assertion as to the 'balance of evidence'.
All in all this report represents confirmation of their implicit belief that only government and regulation can keep us "safe on-line" and that the ever-burgeoning complexity and ambiguity of the resulting body of law can never be an obstacle to the achievement of this "final" solution to on-line abuse.
The following excerpt provides (a necessarily incomplete) flavour of the committee's deliberations:
"34. The Minister told us that regulating legal but harmful content presented the challenge of striking a balance between respecting free speech and ensuring abusive content which falls below the criminal threshold is nonetheless “properly dealt with”. He suggested the approach taken in the draft Bill—with companies retaining the power to set their own terms of service, but with regulatory oversight of their enforcement of those rules—addressed the need for that balance.92
35. In contrast to the Minister’s position, Ruth Smeeth from Index on Censorship argued that “freedom of speech is a fundamental freedom” and that there should not be different sets of rules for online and offline speech.93 An e-petition started in December 2021 claimed that the powers in the Bill to require social media companies to act on lawful speech the Government defines as harmful were an unacceptable threat to free speech; the petition called for the removal of provisions relating to legal speech from the Bill.94 Concerns about the impact of the inclusion of legal but harmful content in the scope of the draft Bill on freedom of speech online have also been raised by the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee.95
36. Other witnesses to our inquiry did not believe that including legal but harmful content in the legislation was a disproportionate interference with free speech, and told us this might in fact be a way to promote freedom of expression online. Chara Bakalis of Oxford Brookes University argued “we cannot treat [the online and offline worlds] the same”, pointing to differences that justified setting different limits on free speech, including the permanency, searchability and speed of dissemination associated with online content; Dr Joe Mulhall from HOPE not Hate also noted the greater ease with which individuals can be targeted for abuse online.96 Andy Burrows from the NSPCC suggested limiting individuals’ exposure to abuse was in fact a prerequisite for freedom of expression and participation online among many communities;97 Dr Mulhall likewise argued:
If we address “legal but harmful” properly, we can vastly expand the amount of free speech on online platforms. We have a wide range of people whose freedom of speech is already suppressed: women, LGBT people, people of colour […] We have such toxic online spaces that there are whole areas of the internet where people do not feel comfortable raising their voice and cannot be heard or would be shouted down if they did.98
37. We heard different perspectives from witnesses on the appropriateness of the definition of harm used in the draft Bill and how this would affect the potential for legal abuse to be addressed under the legislation.99 Nancy Kelley from Stonewall indicated she was “broadly happy” with the definition used.100 Dr Mulhall noted the definition would likely cover content that is legal but nonetheless “very extreme”, such as Holocaust denial; he suggested the Bill could not be effective if it focused only on illegal content.101 By contrast, Ruth Smeeth argued the proposed definition was “very poor”, and not properly defined.102 Matthew Harrison from Mencap suggested the definition contained ambiguities as a result of factors including the option for content to be designated as harmful via secondary legislation at a later stage.103
38. It is appropriate for legal but harmful content to be included in the scope of the Online Safety Bill. The balance of evidence we heard suggests that it is necessary to address this content in the Bill to help protect people from online abuse and promote free speech among groups currently unable to fully express themselves online. However, the lack of clarity in the draft version of the Bill on what content will be covered under this definition is unhelpful. Providing greater clarity on the scope and scale of content the Government expects this definition to capture, and reducing reliance on Ministerial powers to designate such content via secondary legislation at a later date, would be more consistent with respect for freedom of expression. We recommend that the Online Safety Bill should include as comprehensive an indication as possible of what content will be covered under its provisions on content that is harmful to adults or to children in the primary legislation"
View the full report for further information.
See also this UK Column interpretation from December 2021
