Smeeth: Attempt to crackdown on online hate could leave community more vulnerable
Index on Censorship chief executive tells Jewish News she believes government's Online Safety Bill 'is either going to push this stuff onto areas of the internet that most of us don't go to. Or it won't deal with it at all.'
Lee Harpin is the Jewish News's political editor
As a former Jewish MP she continues to be subjected to the most vile and antisemitic abuse on social media.
So it would hardly have been surprising if Ruth Smeeth had emerged as one of the leading supporters of the UK government’s proposed laws to ensure online safety for users and hold tech giants to account for abuse on their platforms.
But speaking to Jewish News as the government prepared to publish its latest updated draft of the Online Safety Bill, Smeeth openly expresses fears that the proposed legislation could leave those being targeted with anti-Jewish “more vulnerable than ever” rather than safer.
The 42 year-old ex-Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent North, who is clearly relishing her new role as chief executive of the influential campaign group Index on Censorship, says she has no doubts the government approached the move to tackle online hate with the “best of intentions.”
But Smeeth insists: “I’ve heard ministers say this Bill will stop the abuse against someone like Laura Kuenssberg.(the BBC’s political editor).
“I heard it said that it’s going to stop abuse against the Jewish community, that it will deal with racism against footballers.
“It’s not. It’s either going to push this stuff onto areas of the internet that most of us don’t go to. Or it won’t deal with it at all.
“You don’t win hearts and minds by introducing a new regulator to say everyone should be really nice to one another.”
Ministers first introduced the Online Safety Bill to parliament in May 2021. But it has since been redrafted following recommendations from two parliamentary committees and from the Law Commission.
Reintroduced to parliament earlier this month, ministers hope the revisions will get support among MPs for it to pass into law by the end of this year.
But Smeeth says what initially began as a valid attempt to prevent online harm towards children by government has “basically turned into a Christmas tree”.
“It has so many balls on it, it is going to fall over,” she says.
“It has gone from being all about children, to how you stop bullying, trolling, disinformation, antisemitism, racism, and how do you protect journalists, everything.”
As part of the Bill the biggest social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, will have to prevent people from being exposed to “legal but harmful” content, which is expected to include antisemitic content alongside the promotion of such as self-harm, eating disorders and misogyny.
Social media giants will have to carry out “risk assessments” of what “legal but harmful” content is likely to appear on their platforms.
They will then be required to set out terms and conditions on how they will deal with it and enforce these.
But Smeeth says: “I have a real issue about ‘legal but harmful’ from a Jewish perspective” – one in which words which are legal to write in books or in letters, will then be deleted from online platforms.
“The issue to me fundamentally is that if you are going to say companies have to delete then the really big bit of this paper that is missing is a ‘digital evidence locker’ for want of a better phrase,” she explains.
“A month ago I had to curtail my social media usage because of the amount of abuse I got.
“I had put up a photo of me campaigning for the Labour Party. Members of the hard left, no longer in the party went ballistic. I got threats over it.
“I know when I’m vulnerable because it’s there.
“If its automatically deleted, or removed a) we won’t ever be able to prosecute the people who are threatening me, and b) I won’t know when I’ve got to be even more careful than I normally am walking down the street.”
Smeeth says the prospect of social media companies potentially deleting threats under new laws actually leaves her with extra concerns
“As someone who is still a target of abuse, my big nervousness is that I don’t know how vulnerable I am,” she says.
“I still have a police panic-button wherever I go. My threat level, even though I’m not an MP anymore, is not going away.
“The last person that was arrested for harassing me, it was the pattern of behaviour that was getting more and aggressive, with pictures of guns eventually being put up,”
“But under the new proposals we wouldn’t have seen the most aggressive ones, because they would have deleted.
And if someone calls me the ‘Y-word’ that will probably be deleted. But those same posts are also more likely to have other threatening content in them.
“And I change my behaviour when I become more vulnerable.”
It would though, be wrong to suggest Smeeth has been left outwardly jaded as a result of the online abuse, which began as she spoke out bravely against antisemitism under Jeremy Corbyn, and continues today from those who backed him.
If anything, her new role has only made her fighting instincts even stronger, and her determination to succeed away from Westminster is self-evident.
Index on Censorship was founded in 1971 as a magazine of solidarity to publish the work of dissidents, including the playwright and future president of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel.
During the current ugly war in Ukraine, it continues to be a vital outlet for those attempting to resist the totalitarianism of Vladimir Putin.
Only this week it published a powerful account of life in the city of Kyiv as the Russian bombardment continued, written by former BBC journalist John Sweeney.
As head of Index,Smeeth has also joined Conservative libertarians like David Davies MP on the QC Gavin Miller on campaign platforms to push back on the government’s attempts to legislate on online harms.
You can’t change culture unless you change education,” argues Smeeth, “which isn’t talked about in the Bill.”
She adds that “rather than deleting stuff, if someone is threatening to kill me I want them nicked.
“That’s not covered in the Bill, we are not giving more money to the police.”
Her interest in the cut and thrust of political life remains obvious, and it would not be the biggest surprise if Smeeth decides to put herself forward as a candidate again at the next general election either.
“The building I used to work in (parliament) it is very easy to get caught up in the bubble,” she says, reflecting on her time as an MP between 2015 and her exit at the last election, in a seat where Brexit became the overwhelmingly dominant issue.
“My experiences of social media and what happened. I’m not saying that would cloud my views but even at the height of it (the abuse) I never came off of Facebook or Twitter.
“I never shut down those communication channels because I thought my constituents had a right to know what I was doing. But this new role has made me think about the unintended consequences of legislation.
“As an MP, when you are involved in doing the legislation, but you could deal with up to 20 different issues a day.
“Last week MPs and the Lords would have covered health, social care, Ukraine…
“No-one has the mental capacity to give everything proper attention. This job has given me time to think.”
Which has left Smeeth with further concerns about the government’s Online Safety proposals.
The current Bill would appear to offer protection for far-right activists such as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson, to continue to pump out hate speech on the own online media channels.
Under the proposed laws journalists would be exempt from the rules, leaving far-right activists such as Yaxley-Lennon the chance to claim that media platforms they have set up earn them the right to be also classed as journalists.
For a staunch defender of the right to free-speech such as Smeeth, surely this presents a tricky dilemma?
She accepts that 30 years ago it could have been decided that anyone carrying a National Union of Journalists card could be classed as being protected by laws around “democratic content.”
These days, with the flourishing of citizen journalism, the definition of who is actually a journalist is not so easily determined.
“What about Tommy Robinson, or when the far right have those horrible newspapers,” says Smeeth. “Are the people writing for that journalists?
“Would they be protected by this because there is nothing but incitement that they are putting out.
“I have huge concerns. We either all have the right to free speech or we haven’t. Why do people like Tommy Robinson get protected by these proposals when people like my former constituents in Stoke don’t.”
Smeeth’s objections to new online laws will also win her plaudits and criticisms from MPs across all different political parties.
“This government is intellectually incoherent on the issue of free speech,” she opines. “But I think the left have their own problems with the Online Safety Bill and they should be as worried as everyone else.
“It’s admirable to say yes we want to stop racism online, we all do. But this is all about process.”
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