32: Clause 6, page 5, line 29, at end insert—
“(ba) the duties about assessments related to adult user empowerment set out in section (Assessment duties: user empowerment),”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment ensures that the new duties in the new Clause proposed after Clause 11 in my name are imposed on providers of Category 1 services.
My Lords, as noble Lords will be aware, the Government removed the legal but harmful provisions from the Bill in another place, given concerns about freedom of expression. I know that many noble Lords would not have taken that approach, but I am grateful for their recognition of the will of the elected House in this regard as well as for their constructive contributions about ways of strengthening the Bill while continuing to respect that.
I am therefore glad to bring forward a package of amendments tabled in my name relating to adult safety. Among other things, these strengthen our existing approach to user empowerment and terms of service by rebalancing the power over the content adults see and interact with online, moving the choice away from unaccountable technology companies and towards individual users.
First, we are introducing a number of amendments, which I am pleased to say have the support of the Opposition Front Bench, which will introduce a comprehensive duty on category 1 providers to carry out a full assessment of the incidence of user empowerment content on their services. The amendments will mean that platforms can be held to account by Ofcom and their users when they fail to assess the incidence of this kind of content on their services or when they fail to offer their users an appropriate ability to control whether or not they view it.
Amendments 19 to 21 and 26—I am grateful to noble Lords opposite for putting their names to them—will strengthen the user empowerment content duty. Category 1 providers will now need proactively to ask their registered adult users how they would like the control features to be applied. We believe that these amendments achieve two important aims that your Lordships have been seeking from these duties: first, they ensure that they are more visible for registered adult users; and, secondly, they offer better protection for young adult users.
My Lords, I speak to Amendments 56, 58, 63 and 183 in my name in this group. I have some complex arguments to make, but time is pressing, so I shall attempt to do so as briefly as possible. I am assisted in that by the fact that my noble friend on the Front Bench very kindly explained that the Government are not going to accept my worthless amendments, without actually waiting to hear what it is I might have said on their behalf.
None the less, I turn briefly to Amendment 183. The Bill has been described, I think justly, as a Twitter-shaped Bill: it does not take proper account of other platforms that operate in different ways. I return to the question of Wikipedia, but also platforms such as Reddit and other community-driven platforms. The requirement for a user-verification tool is of course intended to lead to the possibility that ordinary, unverified users—people like you and me—could have the option to see only that content which comes from those people who are verified.
This is broadly a welcome idea, but when we combine that with the fact that there are community-driven sites such as Wikipedia where there are community contributions and people who contribute to those sites are not always verified—sometimes there are very good reasons why they would want to preserve their anonymity —we end up with the possibility of whole articles having sentences left out and so on. That is not going to happen; the fact is that nobody such as Wikipedia can operate a site like that, so it is another one of those existential questions that the Government have not properly grappled with and really must address before we come to Third Reading, because this will not work the way it is.
As for my other amendments, they are supportive of and consistent with the idea of user verification, and they recognise—as my noble friend said—that user verification is intended to be a substitute for the abandoned “legal but harmful” clause. I welcome the abandonment of that clause and recognise that this provision is more consistent with individual freedom and autonomy and the idea that we can make choices of our own, but it is still open to the possibility of abuse by the platforms themselves. The amendments that I am put forward address, first, the question of what should be the default position. My argument is that the default position should be that filtering is not on and that one has to opt into it, because that that seems to me the adult proposition, the adult choice.
My Lords, I will not engage with the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, since mine are probably the diametric opposite of what he has been saying.
I say, first, on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, that she regrets very much not being able to be here. Amendment 204 in her name is very much a Samaritans amendment. The Samaritans have encouraged her to put it forward and encourage us to support it. It is clear that the Minister has got his retaliation in first and taken the wind out of all our sails right at the beginning. Nevertheless, that does not mean that we cannot come back at the Minister and ask for further and better particulars of what he has to say.
Clearly the Government’s decision to bring in the new offence of encouraging or assisting self-harm is welcome. However—certainly in the view of the Samaritans—this will only bring into the remit of the Bill content that encourages serious self-harm, which must reach the high threshold amounting to grievous bodily harm. Their view, therefore, is that much harmful content will still be left untouched and available to criminals online. This could include information, depictions, instructions and advice on methods of self-harm and suicide. It would also include content that portrays self-harm and suicide as positive or desirable, and graphic descriptions or depictions of self-harm and suicide.
Perhaps the Minister could redouble his efforts to assure us as to how the Bill will take a comprehensive approach to placing duties on all platforms to reduce all dangerous suicide and self-harm content, such as detailed instructions on how people can harm themselves, for adults as well as children. This should also be in respect of smaller sites; it is not just the larger category 1 sites that will need to proactively remove priority illegal content, whatever the level of detail in their risk assessment. I hope I have done my duty by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, who very much regrets that she was not able to be here.
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Amendment 182 to Clause 57 is a rather different animal, but we are again trying to get improvements to what is in the clause at the moment. It tries to focus even more on empowering users by giving them choice. Alongside offering UK users a choice to verify, it will ensure that users are also offered a choice to make that verification visible to others. In a sense, it goes very much with the grain of what the Government have been moving towards with their approach to the use of user-empowerment tools and giving choice at the outset. That is, in a sense, the compromise between default and non-default, as we discussed in Committee. This offers users a different kind of choice, but nevertheless an important choice.
Just as the Bill would not force any UK users to verify, so this amendment would not force any UK users to make their choice to verify visible. All it would do is require that platforms offer them an option. Research suggests that most UK users would choose to verify and to make that visible; I am sure that the Minister is familiar with some of the research. New research published this week by Clean Up the Internet, based on independent opinion polling conducted by Opinium, found that 78% of UK social media users say that it would be helpful to be able to see which social media accounts have been verified to help them avoid scams. Almost as many—77%—say that being able to see which accounts have been verified would help with identifying bullies or trolls. Some 72% say it would help with spotting false or misleading news stories, and 68% say it would help with buying products or services.
Ofcom’s own research into online fraud, published in March this year, found:
“A warning from the platform that content or messages come from an unverified source”
is the single most popular measure platforms could introduce to help users avoid getting drawn into scams. So it would be an extremely popular move for the Minister to accept my amendment, as I am sure he would appreciate.
Is he not outrageous, trying to make appeals to one’s good humour and good sense? But I support him.
I will say only three things about this brief but very useful debate. First, I welcome the toggle-on, toggle-off resolution: that is a good move. It makes sure that people make a choice and that it is made at an appropriate time, when they are using the service. That seems to be the right way forward, so I am glad that that has come through.
Secondly, I still worry that terms of service, even though there are improved transparency measures in these amendments, will eventually need some form of power for Ofcom to set de minimis standards. So much depends on the ability of the terms of service to carry people’s engagement with the social media companies, including the decisions about what to see and not to see, and about whether they want to stay on or keep off. Without some power behind that, I do not think that the transparency will take it. However, we will leave it as it is; it is better than it was before.
Thirdly, user ID is another issue that will come back. I agree entirely with what the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said: this is at the heart of so much of what is wrong with what we see and perceive as happening on the internet. To reduce scams, to be more aware of trolls and to be aware of misinformation and disinformation, you need some sense of who you are talking to, or who is talking to you. There is a case for having that information verified, whether or not it is done on a limited basis, because we need to protect those who need to have their identities concealed for very good reason—we know all about that. As the noble Lord said, it is popular to think that you would be a safer person on the internet if you were able to identify who you were talking to. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
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Amendments 55 and 56, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, my noble friend Lord Moylan and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, seek to provide users with a choice over how the tools are applied for each category of content set out in Clause 12(10), (11) and (12). The legislation gives platforms the flexibility to decide what tools they offer in compliance with Clause 12(2). A blanket approach is unlikely to be consistent with the duty on category 1 services to have particular regard to the importance of protecting users’ freedom of expression when putting these features in place. Additionally, the measures that Ofcom will recommend in its code of practice must consider the impact on freedom of expression so are unlikely to be a blanket approach.
Amendments 58 and 63 would require providers to set and enforce consistent terms of service on how they identify the categories of content to which Clause 12(2) applies; and to apply the features to content only when they have reasonable grounds to infer that it is user empowerment content. I assure noble Lords that the Bill’s freedom of expression duties will prevent providers overapplying the features or adopting an inconsistent or capricious approach. If they do, Ofcom can take enforcement action.
Amendments 59, 64 and 181, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, seek to require that the user empowerment and user verification features are provided at no cost. I reassure the noble Lord that the effect of these amendments is already achieved by the drafting of Clause 12. Category 1 providers will be compliant with their duties only if they proactively ask all registered users whether or not they want to use the user empowerment content features, which would not be possible with a paywall. Amendment 181 is similar and applies to user verification. While the Bill does not specify that verification must be free of charge, category 1 providers can meet the duties in the Bill only by offering all adult users the option to verify themselves.
Turning to Amendment 204, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, I share her concern about the impact that self-harm and suicide content can have. However, as I said in Committee, the Bill goes a long way to provide protections for both children and adults from this content. First, it includes the new criminal offence of encouraging or assisting self-harm. This then feeds through into the Bill’s illegal content duties. Companies will be required to take down such content when it is reported to them by users.
Beyond the illegal content duties, there are specific protections in place for children. The Government have tabled amendments designating content that encourages, promotes or provides instructions as a category of primary priority content, meaning that services will have to prevent children of all ages encountering it. For adults, the Government listened to concerns and, as mentioned, have strengthened the user empowerment duties to make it easier for adult users to opt in to using them by offering a forced choice. We have made a careful decision, however, to balance these protections with users’ right to freedom of expression and therefore cannot require platforms to treat legal content accessed by adults in a prescribed way. That is why, although I share the noble Baroness’s concerns about the type of content that she mentions, I cannot accept her amendment and hope that she will agree.
The Bill’s existing duties require category 1 platforms to offer users the ability to verify their identity. Clause 12 requires category 1 platforms to offer users the ability to filter out users who have not verified their identity. Amendment 183 from my noble friend Lord Moylan seeks to give Ofcom the discretion to decide when it is and is not proportionate for category 1 services to offer users the ability to verify their identity. We do not believe that these will be excessively burdensome, given that they will apply only to category 1 companies, which have the resource and capacity to offer such tools.
Amendment 182 would require platforms to offer users the option to make their verification status visible. The existing duty in Clause 57, in combination with the duty in Clause 12, will already provide significant protections for adults from anonymous abuse. Adult users will now be able to verify their own status and decide to interact only with other verified users, whether or not their status is visible. We do not believe that this amendment would provide additional protections.
The Government carefully considered mandating that all users display their verification status, which may heighten some users’ safety, but it would be detrimental to vulnerable users, who may need to remain anonymous for perfectly justifiable reasons. Further government amendments in my name will expand the types of information that Ofcom can require category 1, 2A and 2B providers to publish in their transparency reports in relation to user empowerment content.
Separately, but also related to transparency, government Amendments 189 and 202 make changes to Clause 67 and Schedule 8. These relate to category 1 providers’ duties to create clear and accessible terms of service and apply them consistently and transparently. Our amendments tighten these parts of the Bill so that all the providers’ terms through which they might indicate that a certain type of content is not allowed on their service, are captured by these duties.
I hope that noble Lords will therefore accept the Government amendments in this group and that my anticipatory remarks about their amendments will give them some food for thought as they make their contributions. I beg to move.
The danger is that the platforms themselves will either opt you into filtering automatically as the default, so you do not see what might be called the full-fat milk that is available on the internet, or that they harass you to do so with constant pop-ups, which we already get. If you go on the Nextdoor website, you constantly get the pop-up saying, “You should switch on notifications”. I do not want notifications; I want to look at it when I want to look at it. I do not want notifications, but I am constantly being driven into pressing the button that says, “Switch on notifications”. You could have something similar here—constantly being driven into switching on the filters—because the platforms themselves will be very worried about the possibility that you might see illegal content. We should guard against that.
Secondly, on Amendment 58, if we are going to have user verification—as I say, there is a lot to be said for that approach—it should be applied consistently. If the platform decides to filter out racist abuse and you opt in to filtering out racist abuse or some other sort of specified abuse, it has to filter all racist abuse, not simply racist abuse that comes from people they do not like; or, with gender assignment abuse, they cannot filter out stuff from only one side or other of the argument. The word “consistently” that is included here is intended to address that, and to require policies that show that, if you opt in to having something filtered out, it would be done on a proper, consistent and systematic basis and not influenced by the platform’s own particular political views.
Finally, we come to Amendment 63 and the question of how this is communicated to users of the internet. This amendment would force the platforms to make these policies about how user verification will operate a part of their terms and conditions in a public and visible way and to ensure that those provisions are applied consistently. It goes a little further than the other amendments—the others could stand on their own—but would also add a little bit more by requiring public and consistent policies that people can see. This works with the grain of what the Government are trying to do; I do not see that the Government can object to any of this. There is nothing wrecking here. It is trying to make everything more workable, more transparent and more obvious.
I hope, given the few minutes or short period of time that will elapse between my sitting down and the Minister returning to the Dispatch Box, that he will have reflected on the negative remarks that he made in his initial speech and will find it possible to accept these amendments now that he has heard the arguments for them.
My own Amendments 55, 59, 64 and 181 are about changes in social media. The Bill really began its life at the high point of the phase where services were free to the user and paid for by adverts. The noble Lord talked about this being a Twitter Bill. Well, to some extent we are influenced by what Twitter has been doing over the last 12 months: it has begun to charge for user-verification services and some features, and other services are adopting versions of what you might call this premium model. So there is a real concern that Clause 12 might not be as comprehensive as the Minister seems to be asserting. I assume that it is covered by the “proportionate” wording in Clause 12, and therefore it would not be proportionate—to put it the other way round—if they charged for this service. I would very much like the Minister to give the detail of that, so I am not going to cover the rest of the points that I would otherwise have made.
The Minister said that a blanket approach would not be appropriate for user-empowerment control features. The thought that people have had is that a platform might choose to have a big red on/off button that would try to cover all the types of content that could be subject to this kind of user-empowerment tool. I do not think the contents of Clause 12 are as clear as the Minister perhaps considers they could be, but they go with the grain of the new government amendments. I should have said right at the beginning—although many of us regret the deletion of “legal but harmful” from the original draft Bill—that the kind of assessment that is going to be made is a step in the right direction and demonstrates that the Minister was definitely listening in Committee. However, if a blanket approach of this kind is taken, that would not be in the spirit of where these user-empowerment tools are meant to go. I welcome what the Minister had to say, but again I would like the specifics of where he thinks the wording is helpful in making sure that we have a much more granular form of user-empowerment control feature when this eventually comes into operation.
Finally, I return to user verification. This is very much in the footsteps of the Joint Committee. The noble Baroness, Lady Merron, spoke very well in Committee to what was then Amendment 41, which was in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. It would required category 1 services to make visible to users whether another user was verified or non-verified.