Today, Nadine Dorries revealed that she will be considering banning tech giants like Facebook from removing any content published on news websites. This would cement freedom of expression online as well as clamp down Silicon Valley censorship.
The Culture Secretary insists her proposed Online Safety Bill will protect journalism by preventing social media firms deleting stories ‘willy-nilly’ after years of doing so without punishment – or recourse for recognised publishers.
During questioning by Lord Gilbert, Panteg (Joint Committee), she admitted that she was willing to take a harder stance against tech firms deleting news stories. He today asked the minister to simply tell Silicon Valley that they cannot take down news articles.
Ms Dorries replied to Lord Gilbert, saying she would consider his recommendations. This would result in a complete exemption for publishers from the Online Safety Bill.
Lord Gilbert, a Tory peer, asked Ms. Dorries to also consider making sure these US companies pay news outlets for the content they share, while still raking in millions of pounds each year in advertising. Ms Dorries indicated that she would reconsider it.
It was just days after MailOnline and other British publishers had accused Google of using ‘woke algorithms to bury or downgrade their original content, while promoting stories from organizations they are more sympathetic towards.
Nadine Dorries (pictured today) revealed she will consider banning tech giants such as Facebook from removing any content published by news websites during questioning by Lord Gilbert of Panteg (right) who urged the minister to simply ‘tell Silicon Valley that they just cannot take down news content’
Owen Meredith, chief executive of News Media Association, said that the Culture Secretary had pledged to examine a full exemption of news publishers from the Online Safety Bill’s scope during an oral evidence session on Draft Online Safety Bill this morning.
“We believe that a complete and robust exemption from this regime is the best way for freedom of speech to be protected alongside the noble objectives of the legislation to crackdown on online harms propagated through the platforms.
“We look forward to working together with the Government to determine how the exemption can best be drafted and implemented.”
Today, Ms Dorries dubbed Nick Clegg & Mark Zuckerberg Mark Zuckerberg. She warned them that they could face criminal charges if Facebook, their sites, including Instagram, continues to share ‘toxic’ and hateful content, particularly material encouraging suicide, self harm, and anorexia.
She stated that she would like to accelerate the introduction personal liability sanctions for company executives to spur a quicker response to the threat from online harms. This will reduce the time it takes to respond to the threat from online harms from two years to three to six month after the bill is passed.
During her evidence, she also criticised Facebook’s recent company name change to Meta and its plans on working in the virtual world known by the metaverse. She said that while Mark Zuckerberg and Nick Clegg would like to ‘take off into this metaverse’, they should instead stay in the real world’ as ‘you will have to answer to this Act’.
The Bill’s draft includes personal criminal liability sanctions for executives that can be implemented within two years of its implementation.
Ms. Dorries stated that it was nonsense for firms to have two years to change and that she was looking at a ‘three to six month’ period for criminal liability.
She stated, “Now, I believe that we heard that Facebook is putting 10 to 20,000 engineers on the metaverse. Now, those 10 to 20,000 engineers must now adhere to your terms and conditions and remove your harmful algorithms. If you don’t, this Bill won’t be watertight.”
They (social media platforms) have the opportunity to do that right now. Why would we give them two more years? Why would they give them two years to do what they can today? You can remove your harmful algorithms now and you won’t be exposing named individuals to criminal liability or prosecution’.
Sundar Pichai, Google CEO and Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook are trying to stop laws that would require their platforms to pay news publishers to publish content.
Children have seen and shared sexist posts like the one shown above on Instagram.
Ms. Dorries stated that she believed the Bill was a ‘possibly most important piece legislation to pass through Parliament’ during her time as an MP. She called it a novel’ piece legislation that was ’groundbreaking’ and ‘extremely essential’.
“So, to all platforms, take notice now – it won’t be two years,” she said to the committee.
“We are looking at truncating it to a much shorter timeframe, and that’s one area as Secretary of State that I want to go farther in this Bill.
“I think it’s just nonsense that platforms were given two year to get ready for what would constitute criminal action.
“They know what they are doing now, and they have the ability to correct it now. They can also abide by their terms and conditions now – they could remove harmful algorithms tomorrow.
According to the current proposals, tech companies that fail to protect their users against harmful content could face fines up to 10% of global turnover. For the largest platforms, this could reach into the billions of pounds.