Government puts the squeeze on web firms
The government threatens to impose levies and tighten regulation on the internet
In the Internet Safety Strategy Green Paper, the government threatens to impose levies and tighten regulation on the internet.
WEB GIANTS ARE under pressure from the UK government with a series of proposed clampdowns on areas as diverse as online safety, fake news and extremist material.
Officials from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) have released plans to make the web companies pay for creating a safer online environment. As part of the Internet Safety Strategy Green Paper, the government claimed it wanted to make Britain “the safest place in the world to be online” and said it would impose a levy on the technology industry to pay for anti-bullying and abuse measures.
As part of the consultation, the culture secretary Karen Bradley outlined a social media code of practice “to remove or address bullying, intimidating or humiliating online content”, including “an industry-wide levy so social media companies and communication service providers contribute”.
Details are scant – as they were when Theresa May suggested Google, Twitter, Facebook and others would face fines if they failed to remove extremist material earlier this year – but the threat of action remains, even if the levy is, supposedly, voluntary.
“Well they might say it’s voluntary, but it’s only that up to a point,” said Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group. “The government knows that the Facebooks of the world wouldn’t want to be accused of making it easy for paedophiles. It’s not really voluntary. It’s more ‘you will pay up’.”
Others are asking if the government is imposing the levy to compensate for its failure to extract sufficient taxes from the internet firms. “Companies that already pay their taxes should not be lumped with extra fines just because the government thinks it can squeeze more money out of them,” said James Price, campaign manager at the TaxPayers’ Alliance. “Allocating taxes to one purpose never works. Tech companies bring huge benefits to consumers, and if people think those businesses aren’t paying enough tax, they should look to the ludicrously complicated tax code that benefits multinationals with large accountancy departments.”
Repeat warnings
The levy is only one of a series of recent threats to tighten up regulation on
The tech giants are wary of increasing political momentum for reining in the freedoms they enjoy
internet companies. In June, the Home Office said it would introduce fines for companies that failed to take down extremist content quickly enough. But a spokesperson for the Home Office told PC Pro that those plans had not developed or even been further discussed since being floated.
On top of the potential for levies and fines, the technology giants are also wary of losing the freedom they enjoy as conduits of information, as opposed to publishers, which are theoretically governed by far tougher standards.
Politicians are warming to the idea of making web companies more accountable after allegations of interference in the US elections and Brexit votes, with Russian agents accused of buying huge numbers of adverts to influence public opinion. In a recent select committee looking into the work of Ofcom, MPs and the current head of Ofcom both suggested social networks were increasingly viewed as publishers, rather than “platforms” that face less scrutiny over content – and can enable the spread of fake news or manipulative social adverts.
“Social media platforms step outside what we might consider to have been their responsibilities by simply saying: ‘We are not a publisher. Whoever puts the material on our platforms, they are the publisher. We are not’,” explained Simon Hart, who is the Conservative MP for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire in Wales.
Ofcom denied that regulating content on the social networks fell within its remit, but concurred that the companies were responsible for the content that appeared on their sites. “I see this being an issue that is finally being grasped, certainly within the EU, certainly within this country, and to my amazement and interest, being asked in the United States as a result of the Russian potential scandals,” said Ofcom chair Patricia Hodgson. “My personal view is that they are publishers.”
A DCMS spokesperson told PC Pro that there were currently no plans to regulate Facebook or other online companies as “publishers”. Facebook, Google or Microsoft all failed to respond to requests for comment.