Contributions
2,186 recent contributions in Hansard
HANSARDONLINE SAFETY BILL (Second sitting)Absolutely. There are plenty of reasons why platforms will rank users’ content, including down-ranking it. Providing personal content recommendations will have that process in it…13 Dec 2022HANSARDONLINE SAFETY BILL (Second sitting)I will come back to some of the earlier points. At the end of the day, when platforms change their terms and conditions, which they are free to do, they will be judged by their…13 Dec 2022HANSARDONLINE SAFETY BILL (Second sitting)I am happy to do that. In the same way that we spoke this morning about children’s protection, I am very aware of the terms of service and what people are getting into by looking…13 Dec 2022HANSARDONLINE SAFETY BILL (Second sitting)I beg to move amendment 19, in clause 18, page 19, line 32, leave out from “also” to second “section”. This is a technical amendment relating to Amendment 20.13 Dec 2022HANSARDONLINE SAFETY BILL (Second sitting)I will have a go at that, but I am happy to write to the hon. Lady if I do not respond as fully as she wants. Down-ranking content is a moderation action, as she says, but it is…13 Dec 2022HANSARDONLINE SAFETY BILL (Second sitting)My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are putting in those protections, but we want companies to have due regard to freedom of speech. I want to clarify a point that my hon.…13 Dec 2022HANSARDONLINE SAFETY BILL (Second sitting)No, not about whether climate change is happening, but we are talking about a wide range. “Provides false information”—how do the companies determine what is false? I am not…13 Dec 2022HANSARDONLINE SAFETY BILL (Second sitting)The amendment does not talk about vaccine efficacy; it talks about content that is harmful to health. That is a wide-ranging thing.13 Dec 2022HANSARDONLINE SAFETY BILL (Second sitting)The Government recognise the importance of giving adult users greater choice about what they see online and who they interact with, while upholding users’ rights to free…13 Dec 2022HANSARDONLINE SAFETY BILL (Second sitting)I follow, but I do not agree. The categories of content in proposed new subsections (8C) and (8D), introduced by amendment 15, underpin a lot of this. I answered the question in…13 Dec 2022HANSARDONLINE SAFETY BILL (Second sitting)Indeed. I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend and that is a good example of enforcement being used. People can be prosecuted if such abuse appears on social media, but a black…13 Dec 2022HANSARDONLINE SAFETY BILL (Second sitting)I absolutely agree. As I said in my opening remarks about the racial abuse picked up in relation to the Euro 2020 football championship, that would have been against the terms and…13 Dec 2022HANSARDONLINE SAFETY BILL (Second sitting)I apologise, Dame Angela. I will bring my remarks to a close by saying that with those triple shields, we have the protections and the fine balance that we need. Question put,…13 Dec 2022HANSARDONLINE SAFETY BILL (Second sitting)I beg to move amendment 8, in clause 14, page 14, line 3, leave out “harmful content” and insert— “content to which this subsection applies”. This amendment, and Amendments 9 to…13 Dec 2022HANSARDONLINE SAFETY BILL (Second sitting)The definitions that we have taken are ones that strike the right balance and have a comparatively high threshold, so that they do not capture challenging and robust discussions…13 Dec 2022HANSARDONLINE SAFETY BILL (Second sitting)The onus on adults is very much a safety net—very much a catch-all, after we have put the onus on the social media companies and the platforms to adhere to their own terms and…13 Dec 2022HANSARDONLINE SAFETY BILL (Second sitting)I do not think the hon. Lady is seriously suggesting that people can communicate only via Facebook—via one platform. The point is that there are a variety of methods of…13 Dec 2022HANSARDONLINE SAFETY BILL (Second sitting)The hon. Lady makes a good point. I talked about the offline world rather than the real world, but clearly that can happen. That is where the balance has to be struck, as we heard…13 Dec 2022HANSARDONLINE SAFETY BILL (Second sitting)Hate crime legislation will always be considered by the Ministry of Justice, but I am not committing to any changes. That is beyond my reach, but the two shields that we talked…13 Dec 2022HANSARDONLINE SAFETY BILL (Second sitting)In the previous debate, I talked about amendment 15, which brought in a lot of protections against content that encourages and promotes, or provides instruction for, self-harm,…13 Dec 2022