Kirsty Blackman
MP for Aberdeen North · Scottish National Party · United Kingdom
“I first raised the issue of self-generated images in Parliament more than four years ago. I have asked almost every single Culture, Media and Sport team about the issue of livestreaming. I am pleased to hear from the Secretary of State that action is being taken, and about the belt-and-braces approach that is coming in.”
“Labour promised £200 million for Grangemouth, none of which has materialised. Labour promised 1,000 jobs for GB Energy, and it turns out that a third of the 130 delivered so far are not actually in Scotland.”
“There is a geographical divide on this issue starker than I have ever seen in this place. Across all parties, every Member representing a Scottish constituency has stressed the issue of jobs, and how important this is to the north-east of Scotland.”
“There is a fundamental question here about what our priority is. Is it to reduce the bill, to reduce the amount of money that we are spending, or to ensure that disabled people can access all the human rights that the rest of us can, access society and be supported? We must recognise the extra costs of disability. What is the priority?”
“May I continue to encourage the Minister to talk to Social Security Scotland and our colleagues in the SNP Government about their experiences of the adult disability payment and whether the changes that have been implemented in Scotland would make a positive difference to those claiming PIP?”
“I will point out where things are today and how we can improve them, rather than looking at what was done in the past, but first, I recognise that although Pride is about celebration, it is also about being angry. We should be angry about the injustices.”
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“It is absolutely the case that those companies still have to do a risk assessment, and a child risk assessment if they meet the relevant criteria. The largest platforms, for example, will still have to do a significant amount of work on risk assessments. However, every time a Minister stands up and talks about what they are requiring platforms and companies to do, they say, “Companies must stick to their terms of service. They must ensure that they enforce things in line with their terms of service.” If a company is finding it too difficult, it will just take the tough things out of their terms of service. It will take out transphobia, it will take out abuse.”
“What is it that freedom of speech campaigners are so desperate to want to say online? Do they want to promote self-harm on platforms? Is that what people want to do? Is that what freedom of speech campaigners are out for? They are now allowed to do that a result of the Bill.”
“What I cannot understand is the Minister’s being willing to stand up there and say, “We can’t have these clauses because they are a risk to freedom of speech.” Why are they in the Bill in the first place if they are such a big risk to freedom of speech? If the Government’s No. 1 priority is making sure that we do not have these clauses, why did they put them in it? Why did it go through pre-legislative scrutiny? Why were they in the draft Bill? Why were they in the Bill? Why did they agree with them in Committee? Why did they agree with them on Report? Why have we ended up in a situation where, suddenly, there is a massive epiphany that they are a threat to freedom of speech and therefore we cannot possibly have them? What is it that people want to say that they will be banned from saying as a result of this Bill?”
“Throughout the consideration of the Bill, I have been clear that I do not want it to end up simply being the keep MPs safe on Twitter Bill. That is not what it should be about. I did not mean that we should therefore take out everything that protects adults; what I meant was that we need to have a big focus on protecting children in the Bill, which thankfully we still do. For all our concerns about the issues and inadequacies of the Bill, it will go some way to providing better protections for children online. But saying that it should not be the keep MPs safe on Twitter Bill does not mean that it should not keep MPs safe on Twitter. I understand how we have got to this situation.”
“It is not just a generational societal thing—it is not just an issue for society as a whole that these conspiracy theories are pervading. Some of the conspiracy theories around antisemitism are unbelievably horrific, but do not step over into illegality or David Icke would not be able to stand up and suggest that the world is run by lizard people—who happen to be Jewish. He would not be allowed to say that because it would be considered harmful content. But now he is. That is fine. He is allowed to say that because this Bill is refusing to take action on that.”
“I still do not know what people want to say that they cannot say as a result of the Bill as it stands. I do not know. I cannot imagine that anybody is not offended by content online that drives people to hurt themselves. I cannot imagine anybody being okay and happy with that. Certainly, I imagine that nobody in this room is okay and happy with that. These people have won this war on the attack on free speech. They have won a situation where they are able to promote misogynistic, incel culture and health disinformation, where they are able to say that the covid vaccine is entirely about putting microchips in people. People are allowed to say that now—great! That is what has been achieved, and it is a societal issue. We have a generational issue where people online are being exposed to harmful content. That will now continue.”
“The promotion of self-harm is not illegal content; people are now able to do that online—congratulations, great! The promotion of incel culture is not illegal content, so this Bill will now allow people to do that online. It will allow terms of service that do not require people to be banned for promoting incel culture, self-harm, not wearing masks and not getting a covid vaccine. It will allow the platforms to allow people to say these things. That is what has been achieved by campaigners. The Bill is making people less safe online. We will continue to have the same problems that we have with people being driven to suicide and radicalised online as a result of the changes being made in this Bill. I know the Government have been leaned on heavily by the free speech lobby.”
“It allows the platforms to do that. It allows them, and requires legal but harmful stuff to be taken into account. It requires the platforms to act—to consider, through risk assessments, the harm done to adults by content that is legal but massively harmful.”
“Why do the Government now think that there is a risk to free speech? If Ofcom never had that power, if it was never an issue, why are the Government bothered about that risk—it clearly was not a risk—to free speech? If that was never a consideration, it obviously was not a risk to free speech, so I am now even more confused as to why the Government have decided that they will have to strip this measure out of the Bill because of the risk to free speech, because clearly it was not a risk in this situation. This is some of the most important stuff in the Bill for the protection of adults, and the Government are keen to remove it.”
“It is not the same situation as it was before, because people are being radicalised by the stuff that they find online. They are being radicalised into situations where they “must do something”—they “must take some action”—because of the culture change in society.”
“The hon. Lady is absolutely right. We have all heard from organisations and individuals who have had their lives destroyed as a result of “legal but harmful”—I don’t have a better phrase for it—content online and of being radicalised by being driven deeper and deeper into blacker and blacker Discord servers, for example, that are getting further and further right wing. A number of the people who are radicalised—who are committing terror attacks, or being referred to the Prevent programme because they are at risk of committing terror attacks—are not so much on the far-right levels of extremism any more, or those with incredible levels of religious extremism, but are in a situation where they have got mixed up or unclear ideological drivers.”
“They should not have to go from that level of protection, prior to 18, to being immediately exposed to comments and content encouraging them to self-harm, and to all of the negative things that we know are present online.”
“That is the thing: this Bill is supposed to be the Online Safety Bill. It is supposed to be about protecting people from the harm that can be done to them by others. It is also supposed to be about protecting people from that radicalisation and that harm that they can end up in. It is supposed to make a difference. It is supposed to be game changer and a world leader. Although, absolutely, I recognise the importance of the child-safety duties in the clauses and the change that that will have, when people turn 18 they do not suddenly become different humans. They do not wake up on their 18th birthday as a different person from the one that they were before.”
“I do not disagree that overnight changes are involved, but the problem is that we are going from a certain level of protection to nothing; there will be a drastic, dramatic shift. We will end up with any vulnerable person who is over 18 being potentially subject to all this content online. I still do not understand what people think they will have won as a result of having the provisions removed from the Bill. I do not understand how people can say, “This is now a substantially better Bill, and we are much freer and better off as a result of the changes.” That is not the case; removing the provisions will mean the internet continuing to be unsafe—much more unsafe than it would have been under the previous iteration of the Bill. It will ensure that more people are harmed as a result of online content. It will absolutely—”
“No, I will not give way again. The change will ensure that people can absolutely say what they like online, but the damage and harm that it will cause are not balanced by the freedoms that have been won.”
“The hon. Member makes a powerful point about the different ways in which people experience things. That tips over into real-life abusive interactions, and goes as far as terrorist incidents in some cases. Does she agree that protecting people’s freedom of expression and safety online also protects people in their real, day-to-day life?”
“I wonder if the hon. Member saw the story online about the couple in New Zealand who refused to let their child have a life-saving operation because they could not guarantee that the blood used would not be from vaccinated people? Is the hon. Member similarly concerned that this has caused real-life harm?”
“Is the Minister really suggesting that it is reasonable for people to say, “Right, I am going to have to walk away from Facebook because I don’t agree with their terms of service,” to hold the platform to account? How does he expect people to keep in touch with each other if they have to walk away from social media platforms in order to try to hold them to account?”
“On illegal content, is the Minister proposing that the Government will introduce new legislation to make, for example, holocaust denial and eating disorder content illegal, whether it is online or offline? If he is saying that the bar in the online and offline worlds should be the same, will the Government introduce more hate crime legislation?”
“Member for Don Valley said, people should be allowed to say what they want online, but the reality is that the extremist content that we have seen published online is radicalising people and bringing them to the point that they are taking physical action against people in the real, offline world as well as taking action online.”
“Why do the Government think people should have to switch off the promotion of suicide content or content that promotes eating disorders? Why is it acceptable that people should have to make an active choice to switch that content off in order to not see it? People have to make an active choice to tick a box that says, “No, I don’t want to see content that is abusing me because of my religion,” or “No, I don’t want to see content that is abusing me because of my membership of the LGBT community.” We do not want people to have to look through the abuse they are receiving in order to press the right buttons to switch it off. As the hon.”
“Thank you for chairing the meeting this afternoon, Dame Angela. I agree wholeheartedly with the amendments tabled by the Labour Front-Bench team. It is important that we talk about climate change denial and what we can do to ensure people are not exposed to that harmful conspiracy theory through content. It is also important that we do what we can to ensure that pregnant women, for example, are not told not to take the covid vaccine or that parents are not told not to vaccinate their children against measles, mumps and rubella. We need to do what we can to ensure measures are in place. I appreciate the list in Government amendment 15, but I have real issues with this idea of a toggle system—of being able to switch off this stuff.”
“My concern is not just about advertising content or stuff that is specifically considered as an advert. If someone put up a TikTok video about how to cheat an online poker system, that would not be classed as an advert and therefore would not be caught. People would still be able to see it, and could not opt out.”
“I do not have to go into the supermarket and say, “No, please do not give me that newspaper!” I just do not pick it up. If we put the Government’s proposal on its head and do what has been suggested in the Opposition amendments, everyone would be in a much better position.”
“However, they are about making sure that people are protected and that they are starting from a position of having to opt in if they want to see harmful content. If I want to see content about holocaust denial—I do not want to see that, but if I did—I should have to clearly tick a button that says, “Yes, I am pretty extreme in my views and I want to see things that are abusing people. I want to see that sort of content.” I should have to opt in to be able to see that. There are a significant number of newspapers out there. I will not even pick up a lot of them because there is so much stuff in them with which I disagree, but I can choose not to pick them up. I do not have that newspaper served to me against my will because I have the opportunity to choose to opt out from buying it.”
“Once again, this is a very smart amendment that I wish I had thought of myself and I am happy to support. The case made by those campaigning for freedom of speech at any cost is about people being able to say what they want to say, no matter how harmful that may be. It is not about requiring me, or anyone else, to read those things—the harmful bile, the holocaust denial or the promotion of suicide that is spouted. It is not freedom of speech to require someone else to see and read such content so I cannot see any potential argument that the Government could come up with against these amendments. The amendments have nothing to do with freedom of speech or with limiting people’s ability to say whatever they want to say or to promote whatever untruths they want to promote.”
“I absolutely agree. Another point that has been made is that this is not creating undue burden; the Government are already creating the burden for companies—I am not saying that it is a bad burden, but the Government are already creating it. We just want people to have the opportunity to opt into it, or out of it. That is the position that we are in.”
“They may not have the capacity or understanding to know that there might be extreme content on those sites. They may not be able to grasp that. It may never cross their minds that there could be extreme content on that site. When they are signing up to TikTok, they should not have to go and find the specific toggle to switch off eating disorder content. All they had thought about was that this is a cool place to look at videos of cats.”
“In the real world, we have a situation where things such as cuckooing take place and people take advantage of vulnerable adults. Social services, the police and various organisations are on the lookout for that and try to do what they can to put protections in place. I am asking for more parity with the real world here. Let us ensure that we have the protections in place, and that people who are vulnerable and taken advantage of far too often have access to those tools in order to protect themselves. It is particularly reasonable. Let us say that somebody with a learning disability particularly likes cats; the Committee may have worked out that I also particularly like cats. Let us say that they want to go on TikTok or YouTube and look at videos of cats. They have to sign up to watch videos of cats.”
“I am able to read fairly well, I would think, and I am able to speak in the House of Commons, but I still do not understand some of the stuff in the privacy features found on some social media sites. I cannot find how to toggle off things that I want to toggle off on the level of accessibility or privacy that I have, particularly on social media platforms; I will focus on those for the moment. The Bill will not achieve even its intended purpose if all people using these services cannot access or understand the safety features and user empowerment tools. I am quite happy to talk about the difference between the real world and the online world. My online friends have no problem with me talking about the real world as if it is something different, because it is.”
“An awful lot of people use the internet, and people should not be excluded from using it and having access to safety features because they have a learning disability. That should not be the case, for example, when someone is trying to find how to report something on a social media platform. I had an absolute nightmare trying to report a racist gif that was offered in the list of gifs that came up. There is no potential way to report that racist gif to Facebook because it does not take responsibility for it, and GIPHY does not take responsibility for it because it might not be a GIPHY gif. It is difficult to find the ways to report some of this stuff and to find some of the privacy settings. Even when someone does find the privacy settings, on a significant number of these platforms they do not make much sense—they are not understandable.”
“I beg to move amendment 101, in clause 14, page 14, line 17, at end insert— “(6A) A duty to ensure features and provisions in subsections (2), (4) and (6) are accessible and understandable to adult users with learning disabilities.” This amendment creates a duty that user empowerment functions must be accessible and understandable to adult users with learning disabilities. This issue was originally brought to my attention by Mencap. It is incredibly important, and it has potentially not been covered adequately by either our previous discussions of the Bill or the Bill itself. The amendment is specifically about ensuring that available features are accessible to adult users with learning disabilities.”
“Amendment (a) proposed to amendment 15 : (a), at end insert— “(8E) Content is within this subsection if it— (a) incites hateful extremism, (b) provides false information about climate change, or (c) is harmful to health.”— (Alex Davies-Jones.) Question put, That the amendment be made.”
“In view of the Minister’s statement, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Amendments made: 13, in clause 14, page 14, line 26, leave out paragraph (a) and insert— “(a) the likelihood of adult users encountering content to which subsection (2) applies by means of the service, and” This amendment is about factors relevant to the proportionality of measures to comply with the duty in subsection (2). The new wording replaces a reference to an adults’ risk assessment, as adults’ risk assessments are no longer required (see Amendment 6 which removes clause 12). Amendment 14, in clause 14, page 14, line 29, leave out “a” and insert “the”. —(Paul Scully.) This is a technical amendment consequential on Amendment 13.”
“If not, will we all have a worse online experience as a result?”
“I will not be able to see something in my TikTok feed that was published by a user who is 13, for example, because there are restrictions on how TikTok deals with and serves that content, in order to provide increased protection and the safety that they want on their services. Will it still be acceptable for companies to have their own internal downgrading system, in order to keep people safe, when content does not necessarily meet an illegality bar or child safety duty bar? The Minister has not used the phrase “market forces”; I think he said “commercial imperative”, and he has talked a lot about that. Some companies and organisations use downgrading to improve the systems on their site and to improve the user experience on the platform. I would very much appreciate it if the Minister explained whether that will still be the case.”
“I am not trying to criticise what the Government are doing, but I genuinely do not understand whether that downgrading would still be allowed, whether it would be an issue, and whether people could complain about their content being downgraded because the platform was a bit concerned about it, and needed to check it out and work out what was going on, or if it was taken off users’ feeds. Some companies, if they think that videos have been uploaded by people who are too young to use the platform, or by a registered child user of the platform, will not serve that content to everybody’s feeds.”
“I am slightly confused, and would appreciate a little clarification from the Minister. I understand what new clause 2 means; if the hon. Member for Pontypridd says that she does not want to see content of a certain nature, and I put something of that nature online, I am not being unfairly discriminated against in any way because she has chosen to opt out of receiving that content. I am slightly confused about the downgrading bit. I know that an awful lot of platforms use downgrading when there is content that they find problematic, or something that they feel is an issue. Rather than taking that content off the platform completely, they may just no longer put it in users’ feeds, for example; they may move it down the priority list, and that may be part of what they already do to keep people safe.”
“I would appreciate it if the Minister could provide more clarity about what that might look like, and about which platforms might have to publish their assessments. I appreciate that that will be scrutinised in the Lords but, to be fair, this is the second time that the Bill has been in Committee in the Commons. It would be helpful if we could be a bit more sighted on what exactly the Government intend to do—meaning more than the handful of lines in a written ministerial statement—because then we would know whether the proposal is adequate, or whether we would have to ask further questions in order to draw it out and ensure that it is published in a certain form. The more information the Minister can provide, the better.”
“Specifically on the issue that was just raised, there were two written ministerial statements on the Online Safety Bill. The first specifically said that an amendment would “require the largest platforms to publish summaries of their risk assessments for illegal content and material that is harmful to children, to allow users and empower parents to clearly understand the risks presented by these services and the approach platforms are taking to children’s safety”. —[ Official Report , 29 November 2022; Vol. 723, c. 31WS.] Unless I have completely missed an amendment that has been tabled for this Committee, my impression is that that amendment will be tabled in the Lords and that details will be made available about how exactly the publishing will work and which platforms will be required to publish.”
“That is not to take away from the expertise in Ofcom, but we could allow it to ask a regulated group of researchers to look at the information and point out any issues that may not have been spotted, particularly given the volume of transparency reports that there are likely to be.”
“We know that platforms in the online world have sudden stellar increases in popularity overnight. Some have been bubbling along for ages with nobody using them. Not all of them are brand-new platforms that suddenly shoot to prominence. The lack of flexibility is a problem. Lastly, I agree about researchers being able to access the transparency information provided. It is really important that we recognise that Ofcom is not the only expert. Ofcom has a huge amount of expertise, and it is massively increasing its staff numbers to cope with these issues, but the reality is that those staff are not academic researchers. They are unable to look at the issues and are not necessarily the most prominent experts in the field of child protection, for example.”
“Ofcom would not have the flexibility to ask for an updated transparency report, even if drastic changes were made to the services. Another thing slightly concerns me about doing this annually and not allowing a bit more flexibility. Let us say that a small platform that none of us has ever heard of, such as Mastodon, shoots to prominence overnight. Let us also say that, as a small platform, Mastodon was previously regulated, and Ofcom had made a request for transparency information shortly before Elon Musk took over Twitter and people had migrated to Mastodon. Mastodon would now be suffering from very different issues than those it had when it had a small number of users, compared with the significant number that it has now. It would have changed dramatically, yet Ofcom would not have the flexibility to seek that information.”
“There is a very good case to be made for some of the transparency reporting to be made public, particularly for the very largest platforms to be required to make it public, or to make sections of it public. I want to talk about the speed of change to the terms of service and about proportionality. If Ofcom could request transparency reporting only annually, imagine that it received transparency information three days before Elon Musk took over Twitter. Twitter would be a completely different place three days later, and Ofcom would be unable to ask for more transparency information for a whole year, by which point a significant amount of damage could have been done. We have seen that the terms of service can change quickly.”
“This may be the only place in the Bill where I do not necessarily agree wholeheartedly with the Labour Front Benchers. I agree with the vast majority of what was said, but I have some concerns about making mandatory the requirement for transparency reports to be public in all circumstances, because there are circumstances in which that would simply highlight loopholes, allowing people to exploit them in a way that we do not want them to do. Specifically on the regularity of reporting and some level of transparency, given that the Minister is keen on the commercial imperative and ensuring that people are safe, we need a higher level of transparency than we currently see among the platforms.”
“We have seen that just from the people from external organisations who have contacted us about the Bill. The amount of expertise that we do not have that they have brought to the table has significantly improved the debate and hopefully the Bill. Even prior to the consultations that have happened, that encouraged the Minister to make the Bill better. Surely that is why the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee looked at the Bill—in order to improve it and to get expert advice. I still think that having specific access to expertise in order to analyse the transparency report has not been covered adequately.”
“Some of the Discord servers are pretty horrendous, and some of the channels are created by social media influencers or people who have pretty extreme views in some cases. We could end up with a case where the Discord server and its chat functions are regulated, but if aural communication or a voice chat is happening on that server, and there are only two people online because it is 3 o’clock in the morning where most of the people live and lots of them are asleep, that would be exempted. That is not the intention of the Bill, but the Government have not yet fixed this. So I will make one more plea to the Government: will they please fix this unintended loophole, so that it does not exist? It is difficult to do, but it needs to be done, and I would appreciate it if the Minister could take that into consideration.”
“If we have child protection duties, for example, they need to apply to all user-generated content and not exempt it specifically because it is a live, one-to-one aural communication. Children are still at significant risk from this type of communication. The Government have put this exemption in because they consider such communication to be analogous to telephony services, but it is not. It is analogous to telephony services if we are talking about a voice call on Skype, WhatsApp or Signal—those are voice calls, just like telephone services—but we are talking about a voice chat that people can have with people who they do not know, whose phone number they do not know and who they have no sort of relationship with.”
“However, allowing one-to-one live aural communications not to be regulated means that if someone is using voice chat in Fortnite, for example, and there are only two people on the team that they are on, or if someone is using voice chat in Discord and there are only two people online on the channel at that time, that is completely unregulated and not taken into account by the Bill. I know that that is not the intention of the Bill, which is intended to cover user-generated content online. The exemption is purely in place for telephony services, but it is far wider than the Government intend it to be. With the advent of more and more people using virtual reality technology, for example, we will have more and more aural communication between just two people, and that needs to be regulated by the Bill. We cannot just allow a free-for-all.”
“I am pleased to see the list included and the number of things that Ofcom can ask for more information on. I have a specific question about amendment 75. Amendment 75 talks about regulated user-generated content and says it has the same meaning as it does in the interpretation of part 3 under clause 50. The Minister may or may not know that there are concerns about clause 50(5), which relates to “One-to-one live aural communications”. One-to-one live aural communications are exempted. I understand that that is because the Government do not believe that telephony services, for example, should be part of the Online Safety Bill—that is a pretty reasonable position for them to take.”