Social media giants have been accused by MPs of creating an online “cesspit” that hides criminal activity and right-wing hate politics.
Facebook, Google and Twitter were slammed yesterday by members of the Commons home affairs committee for their refusal to report users to police when they remove criminal posts.
Representatives of all three firms appeared in front of MPs to discuss their progress on tackling hate speech and terrorism on their platforms.
Yvette Cooper, the chair of the committee, pressed Facebook on whether or not it was reporting to New Zealand authorities the identities of people it believed were attempting to evade its filters and upload footage of the Christchurch terror attacks.
But MPs were shocked to learn that none of the companies had policies of reporting criminal material to law enforcement agencies, except in rare cases when there was an immediate threat to life or limb.
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Cooper highlighted a closed Facebook group with 30,000 members, in which some users have said that she and her family should be shot.
Cooper told the witnesses: “We recognise you have done some additional work but we are coming up time and again with so many examples of where you are failing. You are enabling extremism on your platforms.”
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SNP MP Stuart McDonald said algorithms used by YouTube led to innocent users searching for politics, news and football being directed towards right-wing content.
Labour’s Stephen Doughty MP added: “Your systems are simply not working and, quite frankly, it’s a cesspit. It feels like your companies really don’t give a damn.
“You give a lot of words, you give a lot of rhetoric, you don’t actually take action.”
Facebook’s Neil Potts said it has 2.7billion users and claimed it does “an extremely good job” in taking material down.
Katy Minshall, for Twitter, said safety is its “top priority”, while Marco Pancini, representing YouTube, which is owned by Google, said it is working in 27 European countries to improve detection of offensive content.
