My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 141 and 303 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. Before I do, I mention in passing how delighted I was to see Amendment 40, which carries the names of the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson—may there be many more like that.
I am concerned that without Amendments 141 and 303, the concept of “verified” is not really something that the law can take seriously. I want to ask the Minister two rather technical questions. First, how confident can the Government and Ofcom be that with the current wording, Ofcom could form an assessment of whether Twitter’s current “verified by blue” system satisfies the duty in terms of robustness? If it does not, does Ofcom have the power to send it back to the drawing board? I am sure noble Lords understand why I raise this: we have recently seen “verified by blue” ticks successfully bought by accounts impersonating Martin Lewis, US Senators and Putin propagandists. My concern is that in the absence of a definition of verification in the Bill such as the one proposed in Amendments 141 and 303, where in the current wording does Ofcom have the authority to say that “verified by blue” does not satisfy the user verification duty?
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My second question is similar. We see now around the world—it is not available in the UK—that Meta has a verified subscription, for which you can pay around $15 per month. It is being piloted in the US as we speak. Again, I ask whether that satisfies the duty in terms of it being affordable to the average UK user. I am concerned that most UK social media users will not be able to afford £180 per social media account for verification. If that ends up being Meta’s UK offering, many users would not be given a proper, meaningful chance to be verified. What powers are there in the Bill for Ofcom to send Meta back and offer something else? So my questions really are about what “verified” means in terms of the Bill.