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Ofcom issues online safety warning to firms in wake of UK riots
Ofcom has issued a warning reminding social media firms of their upcoming online safety obligations, after misinformation about the Southport stabbings sparked racist riots throughout the UK
Ofcom has warned that social media firms will be obliged to deal with disinformation and content that is hateful or provokes violence, following a spate of racist riots across the UK.
In the wake of the fatal stabbing of three girls in Southport on 29 July 2024, social media became awash with unsubstantiated rumours that the perpetrator was an asylum seeker of Muslim faith.
While this was later confirmed to be completely false, Islamophobic far-right rioting broke out in more than a dozen English towns and cities over the next few days, specifically targeting mosques, hotels housing asylum seekers and immigration centres.
“Tackling illegal content online is a major priority for Ofcom,” said the regulator in a blog post. “In recent days, we have seen appalling acts of violence in the UK, with questions raised about the role of social media in this context. The UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) will put new duties on tech firms to protect their users from illegal content, which under the Act can include content involving hatred, disorder, provoking violence or certain instances of disinformation.”
It added that when the act comes into force in late 2024, tech firms will then have three months to assess the risk of illegal content on their platforms. They will then be required to take appropriate steps to stop it appearing, and act quickly to remove it when they become aware of it.
“The largest tech firms will in due course need to go even further – by consistently applying their terms of service, which often include banning things like hate speech, inciting violence and harmful disinformation,” said Ofcom, adding that it will have a broad range of enforcement powers at its disposal to deal with non-compliant firms.
“These include the power to impose significant financial penalties for breaches of the safety duties. The regime focuses on platforms’ systems and processes rather than the content itself that is on their platforms.”
Individual accounts
It added that Ofcom’s role will therefore not involve making decisions about individual posts or accounts, or requiring specific pieces of content to be taken down.
Commenting under a video of racist rioters in Liverpool, X owner Elon Musk – who has previously been criticised for allowing far-right figures such as Tommy Robinson back on the social media platform – claimed that “civil war is inevitable” in the UK, prompting the government to denounce his comments.
“There’s no justification for comments like that,” said a Number 10 spokesperson. “What we’ve seen in this country is organised, violent thuggery that has no place, either on our streets or online.”
Following a Cobra meeting between the prime minister, senior cabinet ministers, police chiefs and Ministry of Justice officials, Number 10 said the government is already working with social media platforms to ensure they are fulfilling their duty to remove criminal content quickly, and that processes are in place for when the OSA comes into full force later this year.
“They have a responsibility to ensure the safety of their users and online spaces, to ensure that criminal activity is not being hosted on their platforms,” it said. “They shouldn’t be waiting for the Online Safety Act for that. They already have responsibilities in place under the law … They have responsibilities that we will hold them to account for.”
Online Safety Act limits
While a number of the Online Safety Act’s criminal offences are already in force – including those related to threatening communications, false communications and tech companies’ non-compliance with information notices – it is currently unclear if any of these would be applicable to those using social media to organise racist riots.
Mark Jones, partner at Payne Hicks Beach, for example, said that although the riots were sparked by misinformation around the Southport murders, the act provides no further support in dealing with that misinformation or the incitement of violence it led to.
“The Online Safety Act 2023 could have been a pivotal moment in the way we tackle the harms caused by misinformation,” he said. “However, the final act falls short of the government’s original intention of making the UK the safest place to be online. The only references to misinformation in the act are about setting up a committee to advise Ofcom and changes to Ofcom’s media literacy policy.”
Jones added that while the new false communications offence outlaws the intentional sending of false information that could cause “non-trivial psychological” or physical harm to users online, this provision is predominantly aimed at internet trolls and would be unlikely to cover the events of the past week.
“Instead, the police are likely to have to rely on offences under the Public Order Act 1986, which is the main piece of legislation which penalises the use of violence and/or intimidation by individuals or groups,” he said. “Whilst the home secretary may have said ‘if it’s a crime offline, it’s a crime online’, and whilst that may be correct, the Online Safety Act provides no additional support to the pre-existing criminal law covering incidents of incitement of violence.”
‘Accredited technology’
There are also lingering concerns that Ofcom’s power under the act to order encrypted services to use “accredited technology” to look for and take down illegal content would undermine the utility and safety provided by encrypted communications.
Under Clause 122 of the act, Ofcom has the power to require messaging service providers to develop and deploy software that scans phones for illegal material. Known as client-side scanning, this method compares hash values of encrypted messages against a database of hash values of illegal content stored on a user’s device.
Encrypted communication providers have said Ofcom’s power to require blanket surveillance in private messaging apps in this fashion would “catastrophically reduce safety and privacy for everyone”.
Ofcom’s chief executive, Melanie Dawes, previously said it would not act as a censor, but would tackle the root causes of online harm. “We will set new standards online, making sure sites and apps are safer by design,” she said.
Read more about online safety
- Ofcom publishes draft online child safety rules for tech firms: In the draft codes, Ofcom calls on technology firms to use ‘robust’ age-checking and content moderation systems to keep harmful material away from children online.
- UK in critical need of regulation to fight misinformation online: Misinformation, where it is generated by AI, poses a serious threat due to the ease with which plausible false content can be created and spread.
- IT experts issue new warnings over Online Safety Bill plans to weaken end-to-end encryption: BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, argues the government is seeking a technical fix to terrorism and child abuse without understanding the risks and implications.
