Social media sites such as Facebook and X must comply with UK law, Science Secretary Peter Kyle has said after tech company Meta decided to change the rules on fact-checkers.
Mark Zuckerberg, who owns Meta, said earlier this week that the shift to be implemented in the US would mean content moderators and checkers would “catch less bad stuff” and reduce the number of “innocent” posts. Removal will also decrease.
However, the Science Secretary said BBC’s Sunday with Laura Queensberg Indicate that this announcement was intended for the US and US users of the service.
“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 and sensitive material online, has urged the Prime Minister to take action and tighten internet safety laws, saying Britain is “going backwards” on this issue. .
He accused Zuckerberg and Elon Musk of moving away from security to a “lazy-fair, anybody-goes model” and said they were “going back to the content that Molly was exposed to”. .
Internet safety advocates and campaigners have complained that UK laws are flawed and lack specific rules to deal with live streaming or content that promotes self-harm and suicide.
Kyle said the current laws were “highly uneven” and “unsatisfactory”.
The Online Safety Act, passed in 2023, originally included plans to force social media companies to remove “legal but harmful” content. The proposal was met with a backlash from critics who said it would lead to censorship.
The proposal was dropped and required companies to give consumers more control to select and filter content according to their preferences.
Kyle expressed dismay at the change and said the act had some “very good powers” he was using to address safety concerns.
He said that strict action will be taken against the companies which will not follow the law.