Tech giants face fines in UK, France over extremism posts—PM May

British MPs likely to rumber-stamp law that punishes firms that fail to take action.

Kelly Fiveash – Jun 13, 2017 11:08 am | 19

Credit: Niklas Halle'n/AFP/Getty Images

In the wake of prime minister Theresa May’s chaotic return to Downing Street—where she lost the Tories’ mandate to govern and is now reliant on a deal with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party to cling on to power—one of the first things on her to-do list is Internet regulation.

The PM already threatened to take action against tech giants, such as Google, Twitter, and Facebook, that fail to flush out the sharing of extremist content on their sites. It was in the Conservative manifesto and was repeated after the marauding terror attacks in London Bridge and Borough Market.

May seems determined to keep the conversation going, and the PM will travel to Paris later on Tuesday for counter-terrorism talks with French president Emmanuel Macron. The two leaders have struck a deal to campaign against the Internet being “used as a safe space for terrorists and criminals.”

Number 10 said that the plans could include fines for companies that fail to take down extremist material.

“In the UK we are already working with social media companies to halt the spread of extremist material and poisonous propaganda that is warping young minds,” said the PM.

“And today I can announce that the UK and France will work together to encourage corporations to do more and abide by their social responsibility to step up their efforts to remove harmful content from their networks, including exploring the possibility of creating a new legal liability for tech companies if they fail to remove unacceptable content.”

May is on safe ground politically with this topic: any such legislation is likely to be rubber-stamped by parliament, given the influential cross-party Home Affairs committee’s recent noises about the issues of online hate crime and radicalisation.

Macron and May’s agenda includes lobbying tech firms to establish an industry-led forum, which the PM said at the G7 summit would lead to “new technologies and tools” being “developed and shared to help us deny terrorists their pernicious voice online.”

But Google, Twitter, and Facebook have insisted that they are doing all they can to crack down on terrorist content.

Home secretary Amber Rudd will also travel to Paris to chat with her French counterpart on Tuesday. Downing Street made no mention of highly contentious concerns that have previously been expressed by Rudd about the use of end-to-end encryption.

The UK’s newly installed terror watchdog, Max Hill QC, told the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme that it would be a little heavy-handed of the government to legislate on the issue of online radicalisation. But he said it was “entirely right” to be pressuring tech giants to do more.

“I’ve sat with the relevant police unit as they identify extreme content, I’ve seen them communicating with tech companies, and I’ve seen the cooperation that flows from that. It’s a question of the bulk of the material rather than a lack of cooperation in dealing with it,” he said.

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