Campaigners against antisemitism welcome changes to government’s Online Harms Bill

Campaigners against antisemitism have welcomed improvements to government legislation seeking to make for social media companies take responsibility for harmful and illegal content online and make it safer for users.

The Online Safety Bill returned to the House of Commons on Tuesday for final debates of  Lords’ amendments and is now expected to become law by the end of this year.

One change to the scope of the bill, welcomed by those exposing anti-Jewish hate, was over so-called “small high-harm platforms” who it was feared would use loopholes to escape being impacted by the legislation .

The Antisemitism Policy Trust’s chief executive Danny Stone told Jewish News:  “I’m delighted to see this important change to the Online Safety Bill. 

“We have been making the case for action on small, high harm platforms since before the bill was introduced to parliament several years ago. 

“Our work has regularly been cited in this regard. The change makes the bill a better and more effective piece of legislation. I am grateful to Baroness Morgan and all those across parliament and outside it who helped deliver this result.”

In Tuesday’s Commons debate Alex Davies-Jones, Labour’s shadow tech minister, also praised Stone’s organisation along with the Community Security Trust and Hope Not Hate for their work campaigning to ensure the bill included small, high harm platforms such as Bitchute.

The MP said in the Commons:”While we have been having this debate the CST has exposed BitChute, one of those small high harm platforms for geoblocking some of the hate to comply with legislation but then advertising loopholes and ways to get around that on the platform.” 

The bill places a duty of care on all firms to protect adult users from illegal content such as child sexual abuse images, revenge pornography, threats to kill, selling firearms and terrorist material. Tech platforms have to proactively prevent that material from reaching users.