and so what we want to do is say, we ve got existing offences in law, so we have equalities legislation that protects people s defined characteristics, over their sexual orientation and religious beliefs, for example. and therefore, how do we apply that legislation online? what are the thresholds where we say, the abuse someone is suffering is below the acceptable standards and we believe would put the user, the person posting that content, in breach of the equalities legislation? that s an impossible task, isn t it? you mentioned sexual identity, gender identity. that s an extraordinarily difficult area to navigate, where one person s transphobia is just another person s recognition of biological fact. one could talk about covid and the enormously controversial debate about vaccinations. i mean, nobody, frankly, who listens to the science, doubts that vaccinations are effective and work. but there s a difference between saying, i don t want to get vaccinated and i won t get vaccinat
you appear to have, frankly, very little trust at all in the governance of the big tech companies, and we re talking about the company now known as meta, of course. but we re talking about, i guess, google as well and twitter and these vastly influential companies. you seem to have no faith in their governance, but you want them, in the future, to have much greater responsibility to take very important decisions about what represents online harm. why would you think they d be capable of doing that? well, i wouldn t leave it to them. and that s why what we recommended with our joint committee report was that the online safety regime should be based on existing offences in uk law, where the job of the regulator is explained, it s explaining to the big tech companies through established codes of practice what their requirements are, that they are liable for harmful content on their platforms and if they don t act.set out in the codes of practice, the minimum standards set out in the codes
the minimum standards should be set in law in the uk. it shouldn tjust be based on the terms of service written in silicon valley. you want fines, swingeing fines of up to £18 million, as i understand it, and it could go further. it could go to a percentage of their annual turnover. 10% of global annual turnover. which is an astronomical amount of money for some of these giant multinational corporations. no other country at the moment is anywhere close to following britain s lead. do you think britain can plough this furrow on its own? well, yes, i think we can legislate to set the laws that the companies have to follow for content that is accessed by users in the uk. this has already been done elsewhere in the world in different ways by different countries. so germany, for example, enforces its hate speech laws online, and the tech companies can face liability and sanctions against them for failing to act there. but those sorts of massive fines that you re talking about, they would k
why would you think they d be capable of doing that? well, i wouldn t leave it to them. and that s why what we recommended with our joint committee report was that the online safety regime should be based on existing offences in uk law, where the job of the regulator is explaining to the big tech companies through established codes of practice what their requirements are, that they are liable for harmful content on their platforms and if they don t act.set out in the codes of practice, the minimum standards set out in the codes of practice, then they themselves could be fined. the companies exist at the moment in a world where they would say, well, we don t write the extremist content, that you ve got to go after the person who s doing it. we re just merely hosting it. but they play a central role in recommending and promoting that content. so what we want to do is.
areas of legal but harmful content, and what you need to do is give people much more clarity. so the tech companies know what they re supposed to do in terms of acting on it. a user knows when they re there, they are engaging with content that could be in breach of the law. and so what we want to do is say, we ve got existing offences in law, so we have equalities legislation that protects people s defined characteristics, over their sexual orientation and religious beliefs, for example. and therefore, how do we apply that legislation online? what are the thresholds where we say, the abuse someone is suffering is below the acceptable standards and we believe would put the user, the person posting that content, in breach of the equalities legislation? that s an impossible task, isn t it? you mentioned sexual identity, gender identity. that s an extraordinarily difficult area to navigate, where one person s transphobia is just another person s recognition of biological fact. one could ta