A test of leadership: The Online Safety Bill

Here’s what you need to know this week:

• Affairs of state: The Online Safety Bill and the Tory leadership contest

State-by-state:

• Google News is unscrupulous
• Apple lost Ive for good
• Microsoft won a big deal with Netflix
• Meta issued a Human Rights Report
• Amazon is still hiring
• Tencent took another blow

The fate of the Online Safety Bill hangs in the balance. 

After five years in the making, the government’s flagship attempt to regulate big tech platforms is nearing a crucial moment.

Why? It was due to be debated in Parliament next week, but has been delayed until after the summer recess. When they return in September, MPs will debate possible amendments to the Bill and have to agree a version for a third and final reading in the House of Commons.

It is likely to change. It is also possible that the Bill will be scrapped. One thing is certain, Boris Johnson will no longer be prime minister, and this means a new approach to legislating for online safety might prevail. 

What’s the problem? At the moment, the Bill satisfies almost no one. Apart from current culture secretary Nadine Dorries. It has been a source of confusion and controversy since it first emerged as a draft in May last year. Clocking in at 96,000 words, nearly 200 separate clauses and 126 pages of explanatory notes, the big problem is that it has become so sprawling no one can make completely clear what the Bill will do.

It attempts to: tackle classification of news publishing; the identification of child abuse material; the distinction between harmful and non-harmful content; to establish age verification procedures; force platforms to tackle fake accounts; prompt a crackdown on false advertising, and much more.

Pros and cons. On the one hand critics argue the Bill is too complex, overreaching in the obligations it forces on companies, and fails to understand the real causes of online harm. Whilst the Bill’s supporters argue it will establish protections for children online, root out trolls and force platforms to protect free speech. 

The tech companies themselves – including Meta, Google and Apple – have expressed concern that the Bill sets out unrealistic expectations for reporting, and will stifle innovation in the UK. They have been lobbying aggressively for changes, and have appeared in hearings intended to inform the shape of the Bill.

With such divided opinion, the Conservative leadership race could be a make or break moment for the Online Safety Bill. 

What do the hopefuls think?

Rishi Sunak. The former chancellor has not been vocal about the Bill. He is an advocate of big tech’s interests in the UK though. He has said he will overhaul EU-based laws like the GDPR and cut red tape for technology companies looking to use data. He also praised Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, for announcing 10,000 jobs for UK-based workers earlier this year. If anything, he can be seen as a candidate sympathetic to the tech states’ criticisms of the Bill.

Penny Mordaunt. She has confirmed to Damian Collins, the minister for tech, that she’d continue with the Bill if she becomes leader. “My view of Penny is that she is woke, yes,” Suella Braverman – who was eliminated from the leadership contest last week – told Times Radio. “I have no disrespect to her for her woke views, but I think we should call it out for what it is.” 

Liz Truss. The foreign secretary doesn’t think the Bill is perfect, and has promised to revise it saying “we need to be careful not to damage free speech”. Nadine Dorries, the Bill’s most recent champion, has backed Liz Truss and Dorries has been adamant that nothing in the Bill compromises free speech, saying it “requires services to remove legal content” and that “users will continue to be able to hold robust discussions of controversial issues, including those which might cause offence, online”.

Kemi Badenoch. Eliminated from the leadership race but elevated as a voice of the Right, she sees the Bill as a tool for stirring up anti-woke sentiment. Bashing the Bill – she said that it was legislating for “hurt feelings” – Badenoch is playing to a base that prefers free speech rhetoric over protections for marginalised groups. She claimed that it was “not in a fit state to become law”..

What happens next? “The Online Safety Bill has emerged as a fault line between the candidates looking to lead the Conservative Party. There’s a good chance that the new prime minister will make significant changes to it, particularly to the content that’s harmful but not illegal, which is really the centrepiece of the argument about free speech” according to Ben Greenstone, managing director of Taso Advisory, who consulted DCMS on the Online Safety Bill when it was at white paper stage.

How should the Bill change? It should be leaner, more specific and data-driven. At the moment the legislation places analogue and non-specific reporting requirements on internet platforms who naturally deal in the specific and the digital. “The Bill will go ahead with or without Nadine Dorries,” Greenstone told us, and a minister willing to refresh the approach to technology might make sweeping changes. 

Research required. The Bill should enforce sufficient transparency for Ofcom and other independent organisations to scrutinise the function of the platforms, not let the tech companies mark their own homework. 

Subject specific. The Bill could tackle one substantive issue, rather than all of them at once. Child abuse images, fraudulent advertising, and anti-extremism are all very different aspects of the online world. A catch-all Bill might be a jack-of-all-trades, and a master of none.  

Continued collaboration. The ignorance and ambition of Dorries’ approach to building the Online Safety Bill despite the advice of technology companies has left it seeming to be both ill-informed and contradictory. September should see ministers renew their interests in the consultation offered by the companies themselves – including Google, Apple and Meta. Self-regulation is not a fit solution, but neither is hostile regulation. 

Why this story? The Conservative Party has approached regulation of the internet by posturing around wokery, and much of the debate about free speech is a spin off of its neurosis about censoring extreme voices on the right – beginning with Donald Trump.

It has failed to get serious about what’s required: specific legislation that makes internet companies more transparent and supplements existing laws about harmful communications.

Google News, the company’s news aggregator, was launched 20 years ago in June. You can see an animated timeline here. More interestingly, PR Week has chosen the anniversary to highlight how easy it is to be selected as a “publisher” of news by Google. You don’t need any editorial reputation, you don’t need to register with Google’s Publisher Centre. All you need – the investigation points out – is some simple code embedded in your news stories. As a result, asset managers like Hargreaves Lansdown are outranking the Times and other mainstream press with its own content in Google News. This seems like a recipe for trouble and we’ll be looking into the issue of gaming the news ourselves.

After nearly 30 years leading Apple’s design team, Jony Ive has cut ties with the company. Since joining in 1992, Ive has been credited with the designs of some of Apple’s most famous devices, such as the original iPod, the first iPhones and iPads. Then in 2019, he left the company, but retained a multi-year contract valued at over $100 million, which restricted him from taking on work that Apple found competitive. It also ensured that he would assist in the development of future products, such as an augmented-reality headset expected to be released next year. Sources close to Ive suggested that he left seeking the freedom to take on clients without needing Apple’s clearance. When speaking about Ive to his biographer Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs said, “He’s not just a designer, he has more operational power than anyone at Apple, except me.”

Microsoft scored a huge deal with Netflix. The video streaming service had been hunting for a partner with which to launch its advertising business. Netflix opted for Microsoft, over Google, NBCUniversal and Comcast – all of which were competing for one of the most important deals in global advertising history. A source close to the deal said that Google’s offer to revenue share was undesirably low, and unlike the other suitors, Microsoft doesn’t have its own platform that will compete for eyeballs with Netflix. Google’s YouTube TV is a direct rival. It’s likely that some of Netflix’s 221 million subscribers will opt for a lower subscription fee and lose their ad-free experience. Microsoft will offer up its ad tech unit, Xandr, to help Netflix maximise on those eyeballs.

Meta published its first Human Rights Report. The tech state addresses some aspects of its impact on rights abuses, genocide, misinformation and elections. But “it makes no effort to assess whether Meta is doing a good job or a bad one,” writes Casey Newton in Platformer. The report doesn’t provide a scorecard, nor any comprehensive data on Meta’s activities. It’s more like a corporate ethics statement mixed with a year-in-review. Miranda Sissons, the company’s Director of Human Rights, said that the report would provide a baseline standard that Meta can be accountable to in future. Transparency is welcome, but if you’re also left wondering what the point of the document is, you can try and work it out for yourself here.

Global retail might be facing multiple headwinds – from inflation, supply chain shocks and the war in Ukraine. So it’s notable that Amazon intends to create more than 4,000 permanent jobs in the UK where new hires this year will propel the company into the top 10 private sector employers. It aims to have 75,000 permanent employees by the end of 2022. It’s an impressive number, but the 2022 hiring spree pales in comparison with Amazon’s UK hiring figures in 2020 (10,000 jobs) and 2021 (25,000 jobs).

Tencent can’t seem to catch a break. Only last year we reported on Tencent’s efforts to rebrand NFTs as “digital collectables”. Now its main NFT platform is closing down – as a result, reportedly, of declining sales caused by the regressive monetary policies of the Chinese government. Beijing now prohibits buyers from selling NFTs in private transactions after purchase, killing off the prospect of a secondary market and making Tencent’s business model less attractive.

Thanks for reading,

Alexi Mostrous
@AlexiMostrous

Luke Gbedemah
@LukeGbedemah