Social media comes under scrutiny as MPs debate online ‘hate’

TWITTER has come under renewed pressure over extremist content after Donald Trump shared videos posted by a far-right figurehead.

MPs have raised the issue in Parliament after the US President retweeted Britain First deputy leader Jayda Fransen, who has a verified account on the social network.

Twitter has halted its process of verifying accounts, saying it was perceived as an endorsement, and said it was reviewing accounts with a blue tick, a symbol to mark accounts as genuine.

The network has removed blue ticks from the accounts of far-right figures including English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson and American white nationalist Richard Spencer.

A Twitter spokesman said it would remove verification from accounts that did not meet its guidelines but declined to comment on the verification of Ms Fransen’s account, which has seen a jump in followers of nearly 25,000 since Wednesday afternoon.

Labour MP Stephen Doughty, in raising the issue of online extremism in Parliament yesterday.

He said: “Can the Home Secretary confirm when she and the Government will take tough action, which I support her in her efforts on, on the social media companies? We have had no response from Twitter – a typically irresponsible attitude.”

Home Secretary Amber Rudd responded that the Government took the issue “extremely seriously” and had acted to ban right-wing terror group National Action.

She added: “He asks particularly what else we are doing with online companies to ensure the internet is free of dangerous material and he will no doubt know the UK has been leading in this area. The internet companies are taking action – Twitter now takes down 95% of the illegal material through using artificial intelligence.

“The fact that they are now engaging in machine learning to get this hate taken down is an incredibly important investment and breakthrough to ensure that more is taken down. But we are not complacent – there’s more that needs to be done.”

Tory former minister Tim Loughton even suggested Donald Trump’s account could lose its blue tick, saying that Twitter should “have no hesitance in taking down the Twitter account of the First Citizen of the US, as it would any other citizen of the world who peddles such hate crime”.