Source · Select Committees · Science, Innovation and Technology Committee
Recommendation 7
7
Accepted
Social media technology is insufficiently transparent and accessible to public authorities
Conclusion
The technology used by social media companies should be transparent, explainable and accessible to public authorities, as stated in our Principle
Government response summary AI-generated
The government states that the Online Safety Act (OSA) will deliver greater transparency and accountability through Ofcom's duties, mandatory annual transparency reports, and user empowerment features, thereby addressing the committee's principle.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government · verbatim extract
Accepted
The OSA’s duties will deliver greater transparency and accountability from providers, ensuring Ofcom is well informed, adult users are empowered, and companies are publicly held to account for keeping their users safe online. The strongest protections in the framework are for children, and services which are likely to be accessed by children are required to take measures to protect them from harmful content including that which doesn’t meet the criminal threshold. Under the current framework, the OSA compels Ofcom, the independent regulator, to require categorised services to produce annual transparency reports on safety related issues and the experiences of their users. The contents of these reports is at Ofcom’s discretion, but may include information about the incidence and dissemination of illegal content, content that is harmful to children and content subject to the user empowerment duties. They may also include information about the systems and processes a provider operates to deal with certain types of content, including the provider’s algorithms. Under the OSA, Ofcom also have information gathering powers which they can use to require providers to enable Ofcom to observe how their algorithms function - these powers should help keep providers accountable and enable adult users to make more informed decisions about what platforms they want to use.
Read the full response on Parliament ↗