SOCIAL MEDIA SHAMED AGAIN
MPs confront Facebook, Twitter and Google over fostering online hatred
TWITTER was yesterday accused of profiting from the ‘ ills of society’, as it was publicly shamed for leaving vile hate speech online.
MPs savaged the social media giant, along with Facebook and YouTube- owner Google, for allowing shocking posts to circulate on their websites long after they had been reported.
They also took the companies to task for ‘radicalising’ and ‘grooming’ online users by using algorithms to lead them from one piece of extreme content to another.
Twitter was confronted with a string of anti-Semitic messages and threats of violence and racist abuse towards MPs, which were still on its platform yesterday.
Facebook and Google were lambasted for allowing posts telling people to ‘convert to Islam or die’, and promoting terror groups. However, it was Twitter which came under the fiercest criticism from the Commons’ Home Affairs Select Committee for allowing a succession of ‘kill a Tory’ messages on its site.
Conservative MP Tim Loughton said: ‘You are profiting, I’m afraid, from the fact that people are using your platforms to further the ills of society and you’re allowing them to do it and doing very little proactively to prevent them.’
Labour MP Stephen Doughty added: ‘The impression, and I say this very specifically to Twitter, is that you either can’t cope or that your organisation doesn’t care about these issues – because quite frankly the lack of action taken so far and the lack of response despite these issues being repeatedly raised with you is simply not good enough.’ Twitter, Facebook and Google all said they had made changes to their policies to tackle extreme content.
Facebook and Google have employed thousands to help tackle problematic material, and yesterday repeated claims that they used robots to take down terror content.
However, MPs said that all three of the web giants’ constant promises to clean up their platforms were ‘just not people’s experience at all’.
Labour MP Yvette Cooper, chairman of the committee, took Twitter’s European policy boss Sinead McSweeney to task over a vile Twitter post about a ‘filthy Jew b****’.
The tweet had already been flagged by the committee in March but was still on the platform yesterday.
Miss Cooper said: ‘What is it that we have got to do to get you to take it down?’ She said that in August her office had also reported a series of violent tweets including threats against the Prime Minister, a former PM, and racist abuse towards Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary. None of them had been removed.
Addressing all three firms, Miss Cooper also took issue with the way their algorithms were used to recommend content – so that someone looking at a Britain First tweet, for example, might be shown more content posted by far-Right groups.
These complex computer codes lead users down a rabbit hole of extremism, she suggested, adding: ‘ The police have said they are extremely worried about online radicalisations and online grooming.
‘Isn’t the real truth that your algorithms ... are doing that grooming and that radicalisation?’
The firms were also told to start regularly publishing details about complaints. Google has agreed to do so, but Facebook and Twitter ducked the question.
‘Profiting from the ills of society’