Online Anonymity and Anonymous Abuse

Jo Stevens Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab) [V]]

I thank the hon. Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) for securing this debate, which I know very many colleagues across the House wished to participate in. I, too, wish that we had had more time to listen to and debate this important aspect of online activity. As she so clearly articulated from personal experience, no woman should be prevented from doing her job because of online hate. Maternity leave is a hard-won right for women in this country—it was introduced by a Labour Government—and all women should be able to benefit from it without having to be subjected to abuse.

This has been a difficult debate to listen to, particularly the brave speeches from my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) and my hon. Friends the Members for Bradford West (Naz Shah) and for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols). The issues that this debate raises will resonate across the country because of the prevalence of online abuse. There were excellent contributions from Members across the House, including very thoughtful ones from my hon. Friends the Members for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield), for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) and for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), and my hon. Friends the Members for Easington (Grahame Morris) and for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi).

My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) mentioned in her speech the charity Glitch, which found that almost half of women have reported experiencing online abuse since the beginning of the covid pandemic. Women from all walks of life are subjected to it, but particularly those in public life, from MPs to journalists to TV presenters.

Today’s debate has been a small snapshot of what has become a tsunami of vitriol, hate, misogyny and racism online, a cesspit that parts of public engagement online has sadly become. Just ask my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), the journalist Nadine White or the rugby presenter Sonia McLaughlan. Glitch’s research found that 84% of its respondents experienced online abuse from strangers—a shocking statistic. Members know that much of the abuse directed at us is first seen by our staff, and that can and does take a huge toll on them. Why would any girl or young woman stand for elected public office or become a journalist or a television presenter if this is what awaits them? It erodes our democracy and it erodes our society.

There will always be people who spew anonymous hate and abuse. In past years, it would be a letter hand-written with capital letters and green ink, which required some effort and the cost of a stamp. In today’s world, people have the internet at their fingertips. They have become emboldened and they have been joined by many others, sadly mainly men, who take advantage of unregulated globally powerful and very wealthy online platforms—which are, incidentally, also run by men—to attack and abuse women. Those attacks are copied and amplified to the point where it is normalised within public discourse online.

What should we as politicians and policymakers do to improve the situation? I will make two suggestions to the House. First, leadership should be demonstrated in this House—we heard lots of examples of that this afternoon. When my former colleague Paula Sherriff asked the Prime Minister to moderate

“offensive, dangerous or inflammatory language”,—[Official Report, 25 September 2019; Vol. 664, c. 793.]

the Prime Minister dismissed her request as “humbug”. Many of us in this Chamber were there to hear that at first hand. The way we conduct ourselves in this House has an impact on the world outside. When Government Ministers attack journalists and falsely accuse them of bad practice, they open them up to abuse, too.

Secondly, platforms that facilitate and permit abusers to operate need to be subject to the same regulatory framework that is applied to products on the market that carry a risk of harm, or cause harm to those who use them. We need a product safety regulatory approach for online platforms in the same way as we have them for medicines or children’s toys, to name two examples. If a product has a risk of harm, then the owner, creator or manufacturer—whatever we want to call them—should take steps to mitigate or remove that risk in order to operate. We have heard plenty of examples this afternoon of failures by companies to prevent their platforms from hosting and amplifying abuse and attacks. Algorithms promote this, because algorithms feed the platforms’ business models. Justifiable complaints are ignored, and community standards are weak and not enforced.

As several hon. Members have mentioned, the latest in a long line of shockingly negligent examples concerning Facebook emerged yesterday when it was revealed that its bullying and harassment policy explicitly allows for public figures to be targeted in ways otherwise banned on the site, including through death threats, according to internal moderator guidelines that were leaked to The Guardian. The public figures identified by Facebook include people whose claim to fame may simply be a large social media following or infrequent coverage in local newspapers.

We have heard lots of agreement across the House that anonymous accounts that attack people or spread hate should not be amplified, but nor should those that are not anonymous. While there are legitimate reasons for people to use a pseudonym online, it is clear that those accounts should be limited in what they do, and that other users should be able to limit their interaction with them. This could be done by the platforms now; it could have been done years ago. There is far more that the platforms could do using technology to prevent abuse from being hosted in the first place, and also to take it down quickly when it is reported.

This is why the online safety Bill is so vital and so urgent, and why it is so important that we get it right, so that it is not superseded by technological advancements. That is why Labour backs a principles-based approach. Despite insisting last week that the new law was a priority, the Government have yet again delayed the Bill. Although we expect it to be announced in the forthcoming Queen’s Speech, it is now likely to be more than five years after it was first promised that it will come into law. This delay is inexcusable, because we know that behaviour online can translate to behaviour offline.

The watering down of the measures initially proposed has dripped slowly, very slowly, since the White Paper was published two years ago next month. Why, if the Government are serious about clamping down on this abuse, would they keep in reserve criminal sanctions for senior company executives where there are repeated or aggravated breaches of the legislation, rather than implementing them immediately, as Labour has called for? Why would the Government water down the original proposals so that companies will be encouraged to set minimum terms and conditions, as they will be judged on how they enforce them? That will incentivise completely the wrong approach.

The Bill, whenever it eventually arrives, cannot be a lost opportunity to reset the dial on our online discourse. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. We all recognise and largely agree on what the problems are, and many of us on both sides of the House agree on the solutions. Plenty of them were suggested today. The Government need to stop delaying, stop watering down, catch up with other countries that have taken the lead and get on with this legislation. What have we gained by waiting? Nothing. What is to be gained by waiting? Nothing. This House and the public are impatient to hear from the Government on this legislation.