MPs criticise government for slow coronavirus misinformation response
MPs have lashed out at the government over its failure to respond to concerns regarding online harms during the coronavirus pandemic, calling for legislation to be introduced as a matter of urgency.
Members of the Digital, Cultural, Media and Sport select committee published a report today in which they pushed the government to name the online harms regulator now, having been first recommended by the committee in April last year.
“We are calling on the government to name the regulator now and get on with the ‘world-leading’ legislation on social media that we’ve long been promised,” said committee chair Julian Knight.
“The coronavirus crisis has demonstrated that without due weight of the law, social media companies have no incentive to consider a duty of care to those who use their services.”
The report, entitled Misinformation in the Covid-19 Infodemic, said the government should publish draft legislation — either in part or in full — alongside the full consultation response to the White Paper this autumn.
It noted that the government had suggested it may name Ofcom as online harms regulator in February, but that time was slipping away for such legislation to be truly effective against social media companies.
“… Any continued delay in naming an online harms regulator would bring into question how seriously the government was taking this crucial policy area,” it added.
The regulator should be allowed to judge whether the terms of service written by tech firms adequately meet a list of harms as defined by ministers, and in turn hand out “significant fines” for non-compliance.
MPs said the coronavirus pandemic had worsened the need for legislation in this area, with misinformation about the disease and topics such as 5G leading to attacks on hospitals and telecoms staff.
Meanwhile evidence detailed in the report showed tech companies had at times benefited from the spread of misinformation, as revenue from harmful posts racked up.
Knight said that the proliferation of dangerous claims about Covid-19 has been “unstoppable”, adding that the leaders of social media companies could not be trusted to tackle the problem themselves.
“Evidence that tech companies were able to benefit from the monetisation of false information and allowed others to do so is shocking. We need robust regulation to hold these companies to account,” he added.
The report said tools introduced by tech firms to help mitigate the spread of fake news have so far been inconsistent in their effectiveness, such as the labelling of questionable posts by Twitter and Facebook.
Representatives of Facebook, Google and Twitter have been recalled to give evidence to the Online Harms and Disinformation sub-committee, as MPs were “dissatisfied” with answers on their shortcomings.