Smaller online platforms ‘a haven for white supremacists and antisemites’ MP warns
Government's Online Safety Bill receives cross-party support, but Andrew Percy calls for amendment to recognise issues with smaller platforms like BitChute and 8kun and Minds
Lee Harpin is the Jewish News's political editor
The Conservative MP Andrew Percy has warned that smaller online platforms such as BitChute, 8kun, previously 8chan, or Minds “are a haven for white supremacists, incels, conspiracy theorists and antisemites.”
Addressing MPs in the Commons during the second reading of the Online Harms Bill, Percy urged the government to amend the legislation to recognise the danger of the smaller platforms, away from more recognised outlets like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Arguing that platforms such as BitChute are where antisemites “gather, converse and share and spew their hate”, the MP called for a “small amendment to enable Ofcom to have powers to draw the small but high-harm platforms, based on its assessments—the so-called super-complaints that we have heard about or other means— into the category 1 status. ”
At present, the proposals force so-called ‘Category 1’ companies – the largest online platforms with the widest reach including the most popular social media platforms – to address content harmful to adults that falls below the threshold of a criminal offence.
Smaller platforms such as BitChute and 8kun, would escape this demand as they are currently not classed as Category 1 due to their smaller size.
The Brigg and Goole MP – who is himself Jewish – gave the example of “a post from the so-called anti-Jewish meme repository on the platform Gab which showed a picture of goblins, in this instance the usual grotesque representation of those age-old Jewish physical stereotypes, alongside the phrase, ‘Are you ready to die in another Jewish war, Goyim?'”
Percy, who co-chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism, added:” That is the sort of stuff that is on these small platforms, and it is not rare; we see it all over.
“Indeed, many of these small platforms exist purely to spew such hate, but at present, despite the many measures in the Bill that I support, these sites will be sifted by Ofcom into two major categories based on their size and functionality.”
Outlining changes to long-awaited legislation aimed at tackling online hate in all its forms, Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said the Bill was in part aimed at forcing “the largest social media platforms to enforce their own bans on racism, misogyny, antisemitism, pile-ons and all sorts of other unacceptable behaviour that they claim not to allow but that ruins life in practice. ”
For Labour, Lucy Powell said her party “supports the principles of the Online Safety Bill.” She added:”There has been a wild west online for too long.”
But in an intervention, Christian Wakeford, the MP for Bury South, called for a clearer specification of the “legal but harmful” definition within the Bill.
Wakeford asked why,”given the torrent of racist, antisemitic and misogynistic abuse that grows every single day,” the Bill has “not been made more cohesive with a list of core legal harms, allowing for emerging threats to be dealt with in secondary legislation?”
Dame Maraget Hodge told MPs:”As a Jewish female politician online, I have seen my identities perversely tied together to discredit my character and therefore silence my voice. ”
She then argued:”I cherish anonymity for whistleblowers and domestic violence victims—it is vital—but when it is used as a cloak to harm others, it should be challenged.
“The Government’s halfway measure allows users to choose to block anonymous posts by verifying their own identity.
” That ignores police advice not to block abusive accounts, as those accounts help to identify genuine threats to individuals, and it ignores the danger of giving platforms the power to verify identities.
” We should think about the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
“Surely a third party with experience in unique identification should carry out checks on users. Then we all remain anonymous to platforms, but can be traced by law enforcement if found guilty of harmful abuse. We can then name and shame offenders.”
Summing up at the end of Tuesday’s debate, Chris Philip, the parliamentary under-secretary of state for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, said the “legislation before the House this evening is truly ground-breaking, because no other jurisdiction anywhere in the world has attempted to legislate as comprehensively as we are beginning to legislate here. ”
Addressing who would pay for the services of the regulator Ofcom, Philip added:”The taxpayer will pay for the first two years while we get ready—£88 million over two years—but after that Ofcom will levy fees on these social media firms, so they will pay for regulating their activities. “
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