Web giants shamed for their vile content
FACeBooK, Google and Twitter were shamed yesterday for failing to tackle online hate crime, terrorism and child abuse.
MPs told the social media giants they had a dreadful reputation for dealing with offensive content.
Google was accused of commercial prostitution for running ads alongside YouTube videos that peddle hate. It had refused a request to remove a film that claims Jews have admitted to ‘white genocide’, claiming the content did not violate its rules.
one Google executive even admitted having no staff to root out offensive content. Twitter was accused of failing to suspend users behind vile attacks on politicians such as Germany’s Angela Merkel and London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
Facebook was condemned for refusing to delete a ‘Ban Islam’ page and failing to remove sexualised material about children. The internet bosses were grilled for almost three hours yesterday by MPs on the Commons home affairs committee.
Yvette Cooper, the panel’s chairman, branded YouTube’s enforcement policy a joke. She added: ‘We understand the challenges you face but you all have millions of users in the UK and you make billions of pounds from these users. You all have a terrible reputation among users for dealing swiftly with problems in content.’
Labour MP David Winnick said: ‘When it came to the amount of money made, the millions of dollars, the thought that came to my mind is it’s a form of commercial prostitution. I think that’s a good and apt description. I would be ashamed, absolutely ashamed, to earn my money in the way in which you three do.’
Germany has proposed fines of 50million euros for failures to wipe illegal hate speech from websites. This will bolster calls for Theresa May to follow suit.
Last night Downing Street issued a warning to the social media giants on hate speech, saying: ‘There is more work to do.’
Facebook’s Simon Milner said he was proud of the work his firm did and defended refusing to take down a page referring to Holocaust denial – saying it ‘doesn’t breach our standards’.
Mr Winnick said: ‘Holocaust denial is not a matter of debate; it happened.’
Following sustained questioning, Google’s public affairs chief Peter Barron admitted the firm relied on users to flag up ‘abhorrent’ content.
Asked by Miss Cooper whether his company did any proactive work on ‘clearly illegal content including terrorism and online child abuse’ he replied: ‘No.’
He added: ‘We have 400 hours of video uploaded on to YouTube every minute which is an extraordinary amount of content. Clearly, we don’t want illegal content on our platforms and when flagged to us we remove that as quickly as we possibly can.’
Twitter suspended three user accounts reported for offensive content; but one, which included a tweet saying ‘deport all Muslims’, remained. Nick Pickles of the microblogging site said the tweet did not breach its rules around hateful conduct.
Miss Cooper urged the executives: ‘We all use social media all the time – it does wonderful things, but it can also be used to poison and destroy people’s lives.
‘We need you to do more and to have more social responsibility to protect people.’
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