British law has not changed and tech giants must still obey it, the Science Secretary has said in response to Meta’s decision to do away with content moderation teams.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday that his social media platforms would replace their longstanding fact-checking programme with a “community notes” system similar to Elon Musk’s X platform.
Mr Zuckerberg said the move, seen by some as an attempt to curry favour with the incoming Donald Trump administration in the US, was about “restoring freedom of expression”.
But online safety campaigners have expressed concern that it will allow misinformation to spread more easily and leave children and young people vulnerable to harmful content.
Asked whether social media companies had “changed the game” by moving away from content moderation, Science Secretary Peter Kyle told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg that Meta’s announcement had been “an American statement for American service users”.
He said: “There is one thing that has not changed and that is the law of this land and the determination of this Government to keep everyone safe.”
He added: “Access to the British society and economy is a privilege, it is not a right.
“If you come and operate in this country you abide by the law, and the law says illegal content must be taken down.”
But campaigners have argued that the law does not go far enough in preventing harm.
Andy Burrows, chief executive of the Molly Rose Foundation – named after Molly Russell who killed herself after viewing harmful content online – said Mr Kyle was “right that companies must follow UK laws” but said those laws were “simply not strong enough to address big tech’s bonfire of safety measures”.
He said: “The frontline of online safety now sits with this Government and action is needed to tackle widespread preventable harm happening on their watch.”
His comments follow an intervention by Molly’s father Ian Russell, who on Saturday warned that the UK was “going backwards” on online safety.
Mr Russell said the implementation of the Online Safety Act had been a “disaster” that had “starkly highlighted intrinsic structural weaknesses with the legislative framework”.
Challenged on Mr Russell’s comments on Sunday, Mr Kyle said he had given “a very personal commitment to making sure that everybody, particularly people with vulnerabilities and every child is vulnerable, has protection”.
The Science Secretary said he was “open-minded” about changes to the law, adding that Parliament needed to legislate on online safety more regularly in order to keep up with developments and could not rely on a “big bang” of legislation “every decade or so”.
Although Mr Kyle said he had some “very good powers” that he was using “assertively”, he expressed frustration that the previous government had removed parts of the Online Safety Act that dealt with legal but harmful content.
He said: “Kemi Badenoch, when she was running for leader at that exact point that the Bill was passing through Parliament, said that this was legislating for hurt feelings.
“That entire bit of the Bill was taken out, so I have inherited a landscape where we have a very uneven, unsatisfactory legislative settlement.”