My Lords, finally, the long-awaited Online Safety Bill arrives. The noise preceding it has been deafening. It is noise that we should be proud of because it is the sound of a healthy democracy deliberating on some of the most crucial issues in our society; between privacy and security, sensitivity and freedom of speech, it goes to the integrity of our democracy.
These are not new issues at all, but the context is. Online safety is as broad as the landscape it inhabits, making this Bill of great complexity. I support it. Most of us in this Chamber grew up without the internet—something that our children find a total anathema. Now, it equates itself with something as common as the air we breathe. However, it is not as universally available, for access is controlled by a small number of tech companies that have for years declared themselves platforms and dodged responsibility for content. So a sort of terrifying social anarchy seems to have emerged, where no one is accountable or responsible for anything. This offers a free space for terrorists, easy access to pornography, hate speech and bullying. Social media is available 24/7, 365 days a year, which has driven some of our children to despair. We face growing concerns about how our democracy is being undermined and manipulated—about what is real and what is a Russian bot. Regulation was always coming, but the question is: what sort? We should always be mindful that we do not want the sort of highly censored internet we see in China.
How do we effectively regulate something like the net, which shifts like sand? I have a few points. First, I support the establishment of a duty of care for legal but harmful content for children. In my mind, censorship around only what constitutes legal content falls woefully short of creating the sort of nurturing and safe environment we strive to create elsewhere in society for our children, whether in family units, at school or within the wider community. It is said that it takes a village to bring up a child, but now that village is online. However, we must be transparent about how we do this.
That brings me to my second point: we must avoid censorship with no transparency—whether it is by a government or a tech company—for it is only transparency that guarantees accountability.
Next, I turn to the point about anonymity, which the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, also raised, among others. It is my belief that the assumption in favour of anonymity on the web encourages people to be the worst, not the best, version of themselves. It gives disguise to trolls and bullies, and allows no off button and no shame. I support steps to encourage platforms to verify users’ identity. I understand that there will be some who cannot, such as victims or dissidents, but they can be drawn to sites that are known to protect them. Then there are those who will not, who can seek less mainstream sites, which we, as users, can choose not to use.
Fourthly, we should be doing more to address the challenge of the health of our democracy and the quality of discourse that underpins it. The insidious power of algorithms is driving us to echo chambers and polarising debate. We have lost a sense of a common truth, and with it what forms a lie. This is especially concerning around election campaigns, where fraudulent advertising or disinformation may be difficult to judge and may sometimes come from foreign agents. And what of spending limits? We carefully constructed these through Electoral Commission rules, yet there is a free-for-all on the web. I believe there is more we should do to secure the integrity of the poll online.
Some of the smartest people in the world created the internet; there is no reason why they cannot fix some of its worse characteristics. This is the first of what will surely be many Bills about online safety and how we regulate the internet. While we must strive to protect, we must also be mindful of the boundaries between privacy and security, and freedom of speech and censorship. These are questions which have run for generations through our democracy and always will. We must understand and be honest with ourselves that, while this is a battle worth fighting, it is a battle we will never entirely win.
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