UK’s online safety laws won’t stop a repeat of Southport riots, MPs warn

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LONDON — Britain’s flagship Online Safety Act has “major holes” and won’t protect against future outbreaks of public disorder fueled by misinformation, according to a report out today from the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee.

Last July three young girls were killed in a knife attack in Southport and fast-spreading misinformation about the attacker fueled riots in the U.K. At that point the Online Safety Act was not yet in force, but the committee’s report says it “would have made little difference” if it had been, as it’s lacking in any meaningful enforcement powers against misinformation.

The Act is still not fully in force yet and is being implemented in stages, with the next major milestone coming on July 25, when in-scope service providers will need to take extra steps to protect children online or risk penalties.

Now, even before the Act has been fully implemented, the committee is reopening a debate on legislating against “harmful but legal” content.

Earlier drafts of the Online Safety Act imposed a duty on platforms to tackle material deemed “legal but harmful” to adults, but these provisions were stripped out of the bill under the previous Conservative government amid concerns about freedom of speech, to the dismay of online safety campaigners.

Committee chair and Labour MP Chi Onwurah insisted that the report’s call for the government to essentially return to the drawing board doesn’t mean reopening the same can of worms on online safety versus freedom of expression.

“We have seen on the streets of Sunderland and Hartlepool and Southport the physical realization of the consequences of online misinformation, and I think that has truly concentrated the issue in people’s minds,” she told POLITICO in an interview.

The Act barely deals with misleading content, yet “ministers were reaching for [it] and saying it would address the terrible scenes we saw on the streets of this country over [last] summer,” Onwurah said, a case of “expecting something from Ofcom it wasn’t going to deliver.”

The media regulator conceded in April that even the new False Communications Offence introduced by the Act “will not be easy for a company to identify,” and many legal experts have said the threshold is too high for charges to be successfully brought.

Confusion plus Big Tech lobbying

Part of the problem with the Online Safety Act as it currently stands is that it lacks “principles-based regulation,” Onwurah said, leading to confusion and contradiction between regulators and the government.

The Act “wasn’t based on clear principles. It took seven years to thrash out different issues without establishing what [the] principles are,” she said.

Lobbying by Big Tech probably hasn’t helped either, Onwurah said: “We didn’t get a clear response [from Ofcom] in terms of how many times Ofcom has met with Big Tech companies as opposed to how many times they’ve met with user and consumer advocacy groups.”

Technology Secretary Peter Kyle has also come under fire from campaigners in recent months for appearing too cosy with Big Tech. The government is starting to recognize that it “hasn’t always been listening to the diversity of voices it needs to,” Onwurah said.

“If you’re only listening to what Big Tech says, you will be told ‘it’s not possible to do this, it’s not possible to regulate that, it’s not possible to deprioritize harmful content,’” she said.

One of the committee’s recommendations is that the government should compel platforms to “algorithmically demote” fact-checked misinformation “where it has the potential to cause significant harm.”

Onwurah said she was optimistic the government would sit up and listen given the strength of public feeling.

“Ultimately, political will has its legitimate roots in the views and interests of working people in this country.”

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