Select committee: Petitions Committee
Recommendation 2
Second Report - Tackling online abuse
Published 1 Feb 2022
Paragraph 22
Petitions Committee Tackling Online Abuse All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
As part of its role as the new online safety regulator, we recommend that Ofcom should regularly report on the incidence of online abuse, illegal hate speech, and Violence Against Women and Girls content on the largest social media platforms. This should include disaggregating estimates of the likelihood of a user encountering or being the target of abusive content according to characteristics including race, disability, sexuality, and gender, as well as differentiating between child and adult users.
From: Petitions Committee, Second Report - Tackling online abuse (HC 766), paragraph 22, 1 February 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 28 March 2022 (deadline 1 April 2022).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government welcomes the Committee's report and agrees with a number of its recommendations, while taking a different approach to others, including a statutory consultation duty, legal but harmful content on smaller platforms and a single foundational duty.
- On Recommendation 4, it agrees that hate crime and Violence against Women and Girls offences should be listed as priority illegal offences on the face of the Bill, a change announced on 5 February.
- On Recommendation 3, it does not think a statutory duty to consult civil society organisations is "necessary", citing the existing consultation provisions in the draft Bill.
- On Recommendation 7, it does not think it "appropriate" to require platforms to remove or interfere with legal content, so the duties on legal but harmful content apply to Category 1 services.
- On Recommendations 10 and 11, it is "carefully considering" the Law Commission's hate crime report and will "shortly publish" a new hate crime strategy, without stating a date.