Clegg ‘pushing back’ on duty of care reform

Facebook’s head of global affairs and former deputy PM is taken to task by children’s commissioner

THE children’s commissioner has accused Facebook’s Sir Nick Clegg of hindering the fight against online harms and delaying a tech tax that could help pay for it. In an open letter to him published in The Daily Telegraph today, Anne Longfield says she is “surprised” the former deputy prime minister should be part of the “push back” against proposed duty-of-care laws that he would have been “full-square behind” when in government.

She also criticises him for using delaying tactics to prevent the Government imposing a tech tax on social media firms including Facebook.

Before he joined the social media giant as its head of global affairs on a salary reportedly in excess of £4million, Sir Nick was a prominent critic of the company for paying too little tax and the “jiggery-pokery tax planning” of social media firms in general.

Ms Longfield makes her comments in response to a BBC interview by the former Lib Dem leader in which he disagreed that Facebook put growth ahead of online child safety, claiming that policing such a big platform was a “real challenge” and calling for a pause in plans to introduce the tech tax.

“We warned when the Government did indeed start looking at ways to tackle these problems that any proposed legislation or code would get a big push back from tech companies. So it has proved,” she writes. “I find that surprising. When you were at the top of government I find it hard to believe you wouldn’t have been full-square behind the legislation and codes now being suggested.”

Taking on his defence of free speech and the difficulties of policing, she says: “Removing harmful content shouldn’t carry a fear of being branded heavy handed or at odds with the spirit of free speech.” She adds: “Saying, albeit with regret, that it would be hard to do, is not good enough for a company that has been at the cutting edge of huge “speed and scale” solutions when it wants to promote its own growth. Algorithms and the smartest minds can be found to do the latter, why not the former?”

She says Facebook’s plans to expand end-to-end encryption of messaging is “a real threat to children who may come to harm when interacting with other users, with your company and the police left with no real way of knowing or intervening”. She adds that children are no longer bothering to alert social media platforms to harmful content as they had in the past been unresponsive. Referring to his BBC interview, she says: “Your answers conveyed the idea that somehow those raising concerns don’t understand the difficulties Facebook has in tackling this, or appreciate what has already been done. Social media companies have in reality failed to match the scale of concerns that parents and children have raised with me, in large numbers.”

The Telegraph has campaigned for 18 months for a statutory duty of care to protect children from online harms.