That this House takes note of the Report from the Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee Digital Technology and the Resurrection of Trust (Session 2019–21, HL Paper 77).
My Lords, to tell your Lordships the truth, I feel like an imposter. This report was shaped, inspired and given its passion by Lord Puttnam, the chairman of the committee, who I am delighted to see sitting on the steps of the Throne. I was merely one of the team of Peers who he charmed, argued and occasionally cajoled into unanimously endorsing his vision: trust in democracy resurrected by getting social media back on the leash. David’s high seriousness was of course combined with his impish sense of humour. He egged on his team—noble Lords and an incomparable secretariat led by Olivia Crabtree and Tim Stacey—to produce an irresistible report. We have lost him, and that fact highlights the extraordinary situation that it has taken nearly two years, or at least more than 18 months, from the time we produced our report to its being debated in this House—honestly.
However, Lord Puttnam and we should take comfort from the fact that the seeds we sowed have multiplied. To cite some: the Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill flowed directly from our work, and its report—unlike so many parliamentary reports—is being taken seriously by the Government. That is a continuing debate, but I predict it will have a much more satisfactory outcome than it would have done if our report had never existed. We had an impact on this House’s Communications and Digital Committee report of July 2021. That committee also produced a persuasive report on digital regulation, which makes real some of the Puttnam committee’s recommendations. The House of Commons Petitions Committee produced its valuable report on Tackling Online Abuse, which again picked up some of our themes.
Things that Puttnam said at the time which then seemed controversial now seem commonplace. As David said in his foreword,
“our Report focuses on a different form of crisis, one with roots that extend far deeper, and are likely to last far longer than COVID-19. This is a virus that affects all of us in the UK—a pandemic of ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’. If allowed to flourish these counterfeit truths will result in the collapse of public trust, and without trust democracy as we know it will simply decline into irrelevance.”
Let me dip briefly into the nourishing pot of proposals that Puttnam put forward. Among them are: a CMA full investigation into online platforms’ control over digital advertising—there was a giant step that way in the CMA’s announcement yesterday. There is also holding platforms to account for content they recommend to large audiences, coupled with Ofcom sanctions against platforms that fail to adhere to their duty of care; better co-ordination of regulators; transparency, especially transparency over the genie in the box, algorithms; using technology to engage people for democratic purposes; a large-scale programme of evaluation of digital media literacy initiatives, perhaps focusing, as the committee did, on the extraordinary efforts made by Estonia as part of its efforts to keep Russian misinformation at bay—we know now that not a moment of that has been wasted; and a major review of the implications of platform design for users, producing a code of practice on design transparency. I will not go on, because all noble Lords will have read the report or, if they have not, they will have read the excellent Library briefing, but a cornucopia of goodies is hidden within the report.
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, and I can assure him that he is no impostor. It is a great pleasure to sit on the Communications and Digital Select Committee with him. Without wishing to have a Spartacus moment, let me say that I am the impostor because not only am I not Lord Puttnam, but I did not even sit on the committee whose report we are debating today. While it was a joy for me to join this House, it was a matter of deep regret that shortly after I joined Lord Puttnam decided immediately to resign from the House, so this is my one chance to work with him, albeit semi-virtually.
I have to say that I have no idea why he resigned as I bumped into him in a bar last night at 10 pm and we gave each other a big hug, but it is a genuine source of regret to me because he was a great mentor to me when I was in the other place working on all the issues that he cares so deeply about and which he spent 20 years or more in this House influencing a great deal. Indeed, in my second interview to be chairman of Ofcom, I though fondly of Lord Puttnam this week and his influence on the Communications Act, which brought Ofcom into being. If my noble friend the Minister wants to update the House on how I did in the interview, I will look forward to his informative insights.
I should declare two important interests as set out in the register as they are very relevant to the remarks I want to make. One is that I am on the advisory board of NewsGuard, which also includes luminaries such Jimmy Wales, which rates the veracity of new websites, based on nutrition labels, and I also chair the UK branch of Common Sense Media, a US charity that campaigns for kids’ rights on the internet and looks up to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and 5Rights for inspiration.
I have to say that this report, albeit that we are debating it some 18 months after it was first published, remains as relevant today as it was then, particularly in the light of the horrific events we are seeing in Ukraine. It has never been more important to be able to address the misinformation and disinformation on the internet, particularly propagated according to the platforms. The report makes many sensible recommendations on how to combat that.
My Lords, I am not Lord Puttnam either, but I join my noble friend Lord Lipsey and the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, in paying tribute to him. I do not think he designed the report as being his last one in this House, but he could not have had a more perfect one for him, since it embraces all the years that he has spent in communications, his commitment to democracy and his understanding of the power of education. We have benefited from his ability to be optimistic about the possibilities while warning about the risks, and to always try to come out on the right side of that balance. I am pleased to say that I too think that this report reflects a lot of his skills, and I was grateful to have the opportunity to serve on the committee with my very good friend.
About a quarter of a century ago I was very optimistic about the effect of digital technology on democracy. Although the report looks at the risks, it is important to say that that technology has offered many things that are good, and we ought to treasure those and make the most of them. But we have been too slow to see the risks. Think about what has happened since the committee was set up: events at the Capitol, the coronavirus, Ukraine and overseas interference in elections. And what have we done in those two years? Precious little, except set up even more committees. That is our challenge: our inability to work as speedily as we need to in taking the action we need to take in order to protect democracy.
There are two themes running throughout the report. The first is the idea that democracy requires that those who hold power must be accountable for that power, and that includes technology and the platforms. The second is that we have to empower citizens to be informed, critical users of information—and it is that which I shall concentrate my remarks on.
Quite simply, what has happened with technology in the past two decades is that we have developed a new way of doing politics and a different way of communicating and campaigning. But we have not given our population the skills and the means to navigate their way through it. Too many citizens do not have the skills to really get on top of this process and be the active citizens that we would want them to be. Even more worryingly, our education system is not preparing the next generation so that they will have the skills.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this debate, as it was to be a member of your Lordships’ committee alongside colleagues who are speaking this afternoon. I declare my interest as a non-executive director of Channel 4 television. I am indebted to the staff of the committee, not least Olivia Crabtree, who clerked it so magnificently. I am indebted also to the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, not only for the way that he introduced this debate but for doing me a tremendous service by informing me that Lord Puttnam is on the steps of the Throne today. I was going to say that I was sure he would be watching avidly on screen from Skibbereen. I am very grateful.
What we discovered when we published our report was pertinent at the time; it is even more pertinent with a capital P today. We live not just in an era of great difficulties and uncertainties but, in this specific space, of extraordinary contradictions. We have never been more connected and yet, even pre-pandemic, isolation has never been at such a level. We have never been more connected and yet mental well-being has never been at such crisis levels. We need to understand what digital technologies are. In simple terms, they are just the latest tools—yes, extraordinarily powerful, but the latest tools in our human hands. It is up to us.
The fact that so many platforms are more extractive today than open-cast mining is not a factor of those tools per se. It is how they have been programmed—how they have been deployed and led by the humans who have determined that the way to maximise profit and dwell time, and thus add revenue, is to have those algorithms work in that manner. However, there is nothing whatever inevitable about that. They are tools in our human hands. We have just as much potential to drive public good and public benefit, with collaboration through that connection, as to have the isolation and mental well-being crisis that we currently suffer.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. I listened to his plea about the Elections Bill and how we should take those issues seriously, particularly for blind and partially sighted people, where the Bill in fact worsens their condition and seems to do so deliberately.
I am grateful, of course, to my noble friend Lord Lipsey for introducing this debate but, as he and every speaker have acknowledged, we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Lord Puttnam, who is watching us from the steps of the Throne. His work in chairing and steering the Select Committee throughout all that we did was exemplary. Our clerking team was magnificent, but he admitted that he had sent them more than 2,000 emails during the course of the inquiry, which gives us some indication of his diligence and theirs in supporting us in that work.
I believe that the report, Digital Technology and the Resurrection of Trust, is a huge and important contribution to debate and discussion about the future of our democracy. Its main recommendations require far more attention than the Government’s rather complacent response would suggest. I want to focus on one narrow area: misinformation and disinformation. Who drives it and who benefits?
In evidence to the committee, the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bengarve, distinguished between misinformation—telling you that the moon is made of blue cheese, and honestly believing it—and disinformation, which is knowing full well that the moon is not made of blue cheese but still spreading that as a fact. The committee received clear evidence that the levels of misinformation and disinformation being disseminated, particularly about politics, reduces trust in politicians and public faith in democracy. The pandemic saw a huge rise in levels of misinformation and disinformation: those who do not believe that Covid exists; those who connect it to 5G; or those who believe that vaccines are an attempt by Bill Gates to implant brain-control devices through our arms.
My Lords, I was very lucky to have the chance to serve on Lord Puttnam’s committee. It was a most enlightening and enthralling experience and I stand by all the conclusions that we published in the report and look forward—my noble friends on the Front Bench may not agree with me—to advocating them, when we come to the Elections Bill and the online harms Bill, in various reports.
As the report says, it is up to us to protect democracy and to aim for a world run in the interests of us all. That requires us to be strong and active in advocating that. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, I started out being optimistic about what are now the tech giants, but I now just view them with disgust. It has been a real lesson in how not to be carried away but to look at things critically and to try to understand where the direction they are going might lead. But at least they need us. Without us, the current crop of tech companies would be nothing. What will the next lot—the ones based on robots that can do everything and produce everything—need us for?
It is really important that we have a strong democracy and that we keep control of these companies and those that come afterwards. None of the tech giants that we have at the moment are going to live that long. Where are MySpace and Friends Reunited now? Who now signs up for Facebook who has all their own teeth? These things are going to be replaced. It is our responsibility as a Government to create the conditions so that what comes after the companies we have at the moment is much better and really supports the ideas of trust, amity and power to the people. That is what I look to the Government for: to create the conditions. They could do a lot worse than choose a really strong and informed chair of Ofcom.
My Lords, the previous speakers in this debate have proven beyond doubt that this House should have had the chance to debate this excellent report long before now. For there to be a delay of nearly 18 months before such a debate on such a major report is insulting to those who gave evidence and does a disservice to the work of the clerks, the advisers and the distinguished members of the committee, including the chairman, whom we warmly welcome today and are glad to see observing the debate while also regretting that he is not able to participate. I am sure that he, too, would have had insights to offer to us.
As others have said, the events of the past 18 months have indeed moved things forward. Is there any real doubt now in our minds that Russia and other foreign Governments have used the internet to affect many recent electoral events in this country, including two general elections and the Brexit referendum? My noble friend Lady Morris reminded us about the Capitol riots. The way social media amplifies the false over the true, the extreme over the considered, and the harmful over the benign has a societal cost, and is a real and present harm to ensuring trust in our democracy. The growth in use of disinformation and misinformation is exponential and undermines the trust so vital to our democratic processes, as exemplified in the report.
But there are other things: data-driven political campaigning is growing. It is not limited to specific political advertising on social media and is therefore largely unregulated. We need greater transparency in how political campaigners obtain and use personal data, including what is called “data inferencing”.
I was a member of the excellent Joint Committee on the pre-legislative scrutiny of the online safety Bill, already referred to, and I am confident that when the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, speak, they will acknowledge, as I do, that much of our thinking on this issue was influenced by the arguments and findings of the excellent report that we are discussing today.
My Lords, I declare my interests as chair of 5Rights, a member of the Joint Committee and a member of the digital democracy inquiry. I too pay tribute to Lord Puttnam, our wonderful chairman. For the record, I give thanks for his many acts of kindness and the guidance he offered me as I started to grapple with the world of legislation and politics. He represents the best of this House.
In the life of tech, 20 months is a long time. In that time, we have seen Maria Ressa get a Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to protect free speech, battling hostile state actors and identifying Facebook’s chilling effect on journalism and the broader information ecosystem. Her words reverberate as we witness the information conflict and resulting violence waging across the globe:
“I don’t think we have wrapped our heads around how much technology has allowed the manipulation of individuals and democracies.”
From Frances Haugen, we heard that Facebook ignored its own research showing Instagram made teens anxious and depressed. To Congress, she said:
“I am here today because I believe Facebook’s products harm children, stoke division, and weaken our democracy.”
Of course, we also had the horror of Covid misinformation, the attacks on black footballers, and a 77% increase in self-generated abuse—all fuelled by algorithms supercharged to spread at any cost and whatever the harm to people or society.
Facebook, feeling the heat, went for rebranding, rather than fixing the problem. It re-emerged as Meta with a toe-curling video of two grown men playing in the office and a $10 billion a year plan to make the metaverse our new home—setting off a goldrush in which even McDonald’s filed for trademarks for virtual restaurants. Within weeks, we saw headlines that read
“the metaverse—already a home to sex predators”,
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Not all our proposals were addressed to the Government. One, for example, was addressed to Parliament, recommending it set up a Joint Committee on online safety. As I have said, that happened—to remarkable effect. The CMA and Ofcom also both reacted and have been pushing ahead.
What of those recommendations addressed to the Government? Perhaps one should not expect the Government’s response to the report, which they published in—gulp—September 2020, to match the positive tone of our report. We know you do not get many positive tones in government responses. There are a few areas where progress is being made: imprints on digital political advertising, for example, and, at long last, the beginning of a joined-up approach in government to digital literacy. However, overall, there is something rather depressing about the response. Our committee had high ambitions. The Government have low ambitions—tarnished, moreover, by putting the partisan before the health of the polity in the Elections Bill that we debated only yesterday.
By serendipity, we were discussing electoral law in the previous debate. We were not the only people advocating reform: the Law Commission has a set of proposals. Yet the Government chose to prioritise this partisan Elections Bill—a shocking aberration—over making the change the Law Commission wanted.
We wanted proper declarations of spending by everyone in elections, not just political parties. The Government says that we must take care not to “overburden campaigners”. We proposed more powers for the Electoral Commission. The Elections Bill which the House debated emasculates the commission. We asked for a Bill based on the Law Commission’s recommendations, and we wanted it in place before the next general election. There is no sign of it yet; it remains in the long grass. The Government need to get their priorities straight where electoral law is concerned if they are to retain the confidence of voters. We were an all-party committee recommending changes to sustain democracy. I fear that, too often, they seem a partisan Government, recommending changes to bend democracy their way.
These debates are not over: far from it. Much of what we raised is being taken forward, as I said —at least in debate if not always in legislative action. I must also say that the tone of debate has improved radically. Nobody now defends the exploitation of children by pornographers—as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has frequently pointed out. The Government are actually doing something about it by announcing measures to ensure that age verification is taken seriously. Having said some harsh things about the Government, I cannot tell your Lordships how thrilled I—and, I am sure, the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron—was to find that they were taking some action there. I expect that, like me, she will not be totally satisfied. It is also important that the big tech companies themselves are finally starting to take their critics seriously—that is what a febrile share price does under capitalism—and they are now making not just public affairs but genuine efforts to start to get their act together.
I look forward to the debate and to the Minister’s reply. I have been long enough—may be too long—in politics to have learned how often the short term trumps the long term, how a few votes snatched today can seem more attractive than a healthier democracy tomorrow. In this report, we tried to create a counterweight: an appeal, if you like, to idealism to defeat a widespread and corrosive cynicism. Even today, what we said is a cry worth listening to for those who still believe in progress and democracy, and all of us believe in those two things more strongly as a result of the horrifying events in Ukraine. The report is Lord Puttnam’s legacy and let us hope that it will be his words that shape our future.
There is no doubt that this kind of information on the internet influences people’s responses to news and events. If fact, a report published by Axios today shows that people’s trust in vaccines is very much influenced by the sources from which they get their news, and that people who do not rely on trusted news sources have much less trust in vaccines.
The report addresses the risks placed on our democracy and our electoral process. It is important for us to remember that it is not just the US. There were attempts to influence the German elections, and we can expect that attempts will be made to influence our rather more modest local elections in May—again, particularly given the global circumstances. Those attempts are made through the platforms, through disinformation and deliberate misinformation.
So it is quite right that the report calls for a code on political advertising. Political advertising online has been left in a vacuum, as it were, and indeed the limits on spending by political parties do not take account of the ability to propagate information online. It is also right that the report calls on us to bolster sources of local news. The Communications and Digital Committee recently published a report that called on Google, the BBC, Facebook and others to pool all the money that they give to local news sources as a way of showing their virtuosity, in order to provide a real pool of money—a bit like the Content Fund, which was so successful but is sadly now being discontinued—to provide financial support for genuine news.
Referring to my work with Common Sense Media, I also thoroughly endorse the report’s call for digital citizenship. The report calls for lifelong learning for digital citizenship, and it is vital that our young people in schools get a proper digital citizenship curriculum. They are growing up in a digital age; they are savvy and they know their way around it. Nevertheless, if the Government backed this much more vigorously, that would make it quite clear how important it is that our children are given the tools to navigate the internet and the information that they are bombarded with.
I conclude, as the numbers flash, by once again recording—because I have not given any speech in this House since I have been here without doing so—my unequivocal support for the BBC. I mentioned Ukraine in my opening remarks. There are many issues to do with Ukraine, but one of them is how important it is for people in this country, and indeed in Ukraine and the world, to have a trusted news source such as the BBC.
David said in his foreword to the report:
“In the digital world, our belief in what we see, hear and read is being distorted to the point at which we no longer know who or what to trust.”
I do not think anybody here would say that that is not the case; in preparing our children to be active, confident and digitally literate citizens, our education system has got to take account of that world. It is not like it was when I was a child, or a teacher; it is not old-fashioned civics, or learning about the electoral system or where to put the “X”. Quite simply, there was not one witness in this report who thought that what we were doing in our schools was fit for purpose and would do the job of preparing our children to be active citizens in the digital arena.
More worrying than that is the evidence that was given by Ministers and civil servants. I have never been as frustrated about how far from reality they seem to be as I was on this issue. They told us that what they had done to prepare our children was bring in computing classes—one element of PSHE and citizenship that in any case is only one lesson a week if you are lucky. That is simply not enough. The worrying thing is that we do not have a department that understands the nature of the challenge, let alone has the ambition to meet that challenge.
I know that, since then, we have had the online media strategy published by DCMS, and that has in it some more promising work; it recognises the work that many of the charities and indeed the digital platforms are doing. But in the end, all it has done is transport the inadequacies of the DfE into its own report. If cross-departmental working is going to bring value added, you cannot just transport a pretty miserable set of activities from one department into what could have been a half-decent report in another department. I would ask the Minister to look at that again.
There is hope, however. From what I know of the department, when DfE takes seriously something such as literacy or numeracy, and works hard at it, it scours the world for best practice. We have all heard about how the Chinese teach maths and how the Australians teach literacy. Where has the energy gone into finding who does digital skills well? It is there. We received evidence from Estonia and Finland. We heard about Latvia, Denmark and Sweden. We are not world-beating in preparing our children to be confident citizens in the digital world. We are not even on the first rung. This is serious—as serious as if we were bringing up a generation of children who could not read or write. I would like to see a bit more ambition in government to make that right. I do see that ambition in our report, and I very much hope that its impact will be felt in the years to come.
These tools give us the opportunity to reach much further than at any other time in human society and drive that public debate. What kind of society or economy—what kind of cities, communities, country and globe—do we want to be living, working and playing in? All these tools could play such a role and it is pertinent not only to have this debate today but to have it connected to the Elections Bill that is going through your Lordships’ House. For example, if we had the electoral roll based on a digital ledger technologies platform, that would drive away in an instant so many of the difficulties that we have with the current system.
For people like myself—the blind and visually impaired—and other disabled people going to cast their vote, digital technologies, accessibly and inclusively deployed, could make such a difference. They could enable that vote to be made independently and, crucially, in secret. As we are celebrating 150 years of the Ballot Act, that would seem to be a pretty good thing to strike at if we want to call ourselves a liberal democracy.
The potential is there but it is far from realised right now. We had a phenomenal committee chair in Lord Puttnam. His guiding hand and wise head, with us then and today, proved that he is far more than a local hero. This is not just an opportunity. If we all strive to drive collective action, not only can we use digital technologies for better outcomes and an improved, more engaging democracy, but we can fundamentally rewrite the social contract between citizen and state for the benefit and betterment of both. That is the mission; let us all stick to it.
So why does misinformation and disinformation spread? The committee received abundant evidence that the very design of the social media platforms facilitates that spread. The algorithms are designed to maximise the time that people spend on the individual platforms. If you appear to take an interest or to like one type of content, you are served more and more of the same. It may be natural to be curious about so-called conspiracy theories initially, but then you see more and more of the same. The initial nonsense gets apparent reinforcement, so you think that perhaps it must have had some truth—and so it goes on.
The other factor is the deliberate amplification of particular disinformation messages. Sometimes this is because the adherents of a particular viewpoint are more engaged in organising, liking and forwarding such messages, but it is not just about like-minded individuals acting together. Messages can be targeted at particular demographics with a view to influencing or reinforcing political opinions. This was the whole basis of the offer made by Cambridge Analytica: if individuals are already predisposed to voting in a particular way, receiving a barrage of messages may make such a vote more likely. Is that legitimate campaigning? Not if the basis is misinformation that should have been corrected, or if it is wilful disinformation. It can be mechanised, moreover, with armies of bots to spread the message.
Who gains from this and how does it affect our democracy? The objective may be to produce a particular result or it may be designed to undermine faith in the system—in democracy itself. In a hotly contested election or referendum, an anti-democratic overseas power—let us not mince words: Russia—may or may not be keen to see one outcome or another, but it has unequivocally succeeded if, at the end of the process, one side or another believes that the rightful result was stolen and the idea gains hold that democratic processes do not work. That is the process that led to the attack on Capitol Hill in January last year.
How do we combat this? First, the origin of material placed on social media must be clear. Secondly, we should place greater obligations on social media platforms to limit the spread of disinformation. Thirdly, we should encourage the effective countering of that disinformation and misinformation and support the organisations, such as Full Fact, that do that. Fourthly—this was mentioned by several noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, and my noble friend Lady Morris—we should equip citizens, particularly the next generation of citizens, with the skills to be discerning receivers of information and the critical thinking skills to question the origin of dubious assertions.
These were the themes addressed in the committee’s report and they are even more urgent now than they were when we produced it. I just hope that the Minister will do better than the woefully inadequate government response when he closes the debate this afternoon.
The report of our Joint Committee was unanimous, and we await the Government’s response to it. If it is adopted, the report proposes a sea change in the way we regulate social media companies. As my noble friend Lord Harris just said, their business model, based on data harvesting and microtargeted advertising, values engagement of users at all costs, regardless of what holds their attention. While the need to safeguard our children from being likely to access inappropriate material online has to be a priority, it is important to recognise that we are dealing with huge companies whose staggeringly large profits are made at the expense of key issues we must have regard to, such as social cohesion and democratic engagement.
My argument today is that leaving this area of activity unregulated will cause great harm and destroy trust in our democracy, and it must be legislated for. There is a way forward. If the recommendations of our Joint Committee are accepted, the revised online safety Bill will at last hold regulated online services fully responsible for the risks they create by their design and operation, including the algorithms. The key principle is that the laws governing our democracy and elections, like those affecting social intercourse, need to be upheld in the virtual world. If a platform carries, promotes or recommends material to its users which would be against our electoral laws, or recommends or endorses disinformation or misinformation in a way likely to influence elections, a regulator must have robust powers to act when regulated companies fail to do so.
The consequence of this approach is that we urgently need to look at the powers available to the Electoral Commission, as regulator, and ensure that they are fit for purpose in the virtual world. The Joint Committee did not have time to do that properly in the limited time allocated to us to review the draft Bill. At the very least, the Government should be using the current Elections Bill, or commit to future legislation, to ensure that the powers that will be made available to Ofcom shortly can be shared with the Electoral Commission and the ICO, and that there will be no barrier to joint action against firms, organisations or individuals threatening the integrity of our democratic processes. It is that important. Fines and sanctions need to be commensurate with those being made available to Ofcom and the ICO for other harms.
Finally, consideration must be given to ensuring that the Electoral Commission is admitted as a member of the statutory body which we hope will replace the informal DRF, and which we hope that Parliament will set up to co-ordinate regulatory action in the digital world. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
and
“Metaverse app allows kids into virtual strip clubs.”
My own personal low point was reading about a New York Times journalist who arrived in the metaverse to find that another avatar immediately groped her and then ejaculated in her face. Her pleas to stop were unheard until her abuser, satisfied, walked jauntily away.
Before I continue, I will make two things abundantly clear. First, Meta is not the only tech company at fault. Indeed, it is, by some measure, not the worst. However, it epitomises the culture of a sector that fails to protect its users and spends a fortune on lobbying to make certain that none of the rest of us does. Secondly, the metaverse is not, in and of itself, a problem. My own brief forays include an extraordinary whodunit adventure with a film noir aesthetic, and a fantastic training environment for social workers that allow them to rehearse how to spot signs of abuse or neglect. None the less, Meta has done us an extraordinary favour in showing us that we cannot slice and dice the digital world. The time for picking battles or offering partial protections has passed, because the technology and its associated risk are interconnected and constantly evolving. Laws must be about principles and product safety, with a radical transparency and democratic accountability. In a connected world, the risk to the user is the weakest link.
Twenty months is a long time in the life of a child. I have stood here too many times telling the Minister and his multiple predecessors about the real-time costs to children’s bodies, mental health, life chances and, in tragic cases, lives. It is not too late to fast-track privacy-preserving age-assurance regulation. The daily harms experienced by children, while they wait, must surely be on the consciences of officials and Ministers. So too, the support desperately needed by bereaved parents—in their quest to get tech companies to hand over information which may save other children from a similar fate—cannot wait until 2025.
I believe the online safety Bill will be published on Tuesday, so I will not ask questions that cannot be answered here. But while every part of my being hopes that the Bill will reflect the recommendations of both the Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee and the Joint Committee to simplify, strengthen, future-proof and make enforceable the online safety regime, I fear that we will simply get a series of eye-catching additions to the draft Bill which will fail to make the systemic changes necessary.
Last night, I was speaking to a group of teenagers, one of whom said, “The digital world is our oyster, you should assume we are there until you can prove we are not.” Another simply said, “I don’t think it’s right that the tech companies can prey on us.” They know, we know and the Government know what this Bill must do. It is the job of this House and the other place to make sure that the online safety Bill is fit for the future and, in being so, reinstates the trust that Lord Puttnam so desperately wanted to see.