Science Secretary Peter Kyle has said social media sites such as Facebook and X will still have to comply with UK law.
Mark Zuckerberg, whose Meta company includes Facebook and Instagram, said earlier this week that the change – which only applies in the US – would mean content moderators “catch less bad stuff.” “gay” but it will also reduce the number of “innocent” posts being removed. .
Kyle told the BBC’s Sunday Show with Laura Queensberg that the announcement was “an American statement to American service users”.
“If you come and work in this country you obey the law, and the law says illegal content must be removed.”
Ian Russell, the father of 14-year-old Molly Russell, who took her own life after viewing harmful content online, urged the Prime Minister on Saturday to toughen internet safety laws, saying that the UK would “take the lead” on the issue. Going backwards”.
He said Zuckerberg and ex-boss Elon Musk were moving away from security toward a “laze-fair, anything-goes model.”
He said companies are “moving back to the harmful content that Molly was exposed to”.
A Meta spokesperson told the BBC that “there has been no change in how we deal with content that promotes suicide, self-harm and eating disorders” and that the company “remains at this high level”. We will continue to use our automated systems to scan sensitive content.”
Internet safety campaigners complain that UK laws are flawed, with a lack of specific laws covering live streaming or suicide and self-harm content.
Kyle said the current laws around online safety are “highly uneven” and “unsatisfactory”.
The Online Safety Act, passed by the previous government in 2023, originally included plans to force social media companies to remove some “legal but harmful” content such as promoting eating disorders. Posts with
However, the proposal sparked a backlash from critics that it could lead to censorship.
The plan was left to mature social media users and instead gave companies more control to filter such content to users. There was a need to give what they did not want to see. The law still expects companies to protect children from legal but harmful content.
Kyle expressed disappointment at the change but did not say whether he would bring up the proposal again.
He said there were some “very good powers” in the act which he was using “enthusiastically” to tackle new security concerns and that ministers would have powers in the coming months to ensure that Online platforms are providing age appropriate content.
Companies that do not comply with the law will face “extremely severe” sanctions, he said.
He also said Parliament needed to speed up updating the law to adapt to new technologies and was “very open-minded” about introducing new legislation.