Tech giants will be forced to ban fake news under British plans

Firms could be required to suppress posts even if they are not illegal

Tech companies will be forced to ban fake news from their platforms under plans being considered by the Government in the wake of the riots.
Sir Keir Starmer suggested on Friday that the Government would review social media laws as part of efforts to prevent further disorder.
The Telegraph understands that ministers are looking at introducing a duty on social media companies to restrict “legal but harmful” content.
It could mean that firms are required to remove or suppress posts spreading fake news about asylum seekers or other topics such as self-harm, even if they do not meet the threshold for illegality.
However, critics have said the proposals expose “the sinister and authoritarian side” of Sir Keir’s Labour Party, driving “a coach and horses” through the principle of free speech.
The plans come after a row between Elon Musk who owns X, formerly known as Twitter, and the Prime Minister over his handling of the riots.
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The potential crackdown on tech companies would likely form part of a review of the Online Safety Act, which was passed last year.
The Act requires platforms to take “robust action” against illegal content and activity and will be implemented gradually.
A “legal but harmful” clause, requiring firms to take down or restrict the visibility of content deemed to be dangerous but not against the law, was included in the original Bill brought forward by the Tories in 2022.
However, it was removed because of free-speech concerns, with critics warning it could allow a future Labour government to censor controversial material.
Kemi Badenoch, a candidate for the Tory leadership, previously described it as “legislating for hurt feelings”.
The clause was replaced with a new “triple-shield” of protections, including a duty on firms to give users the tools to filter out content that they do not want to see.
The final legislation was passed last year, following years of campaigning by The Telegraph for social media firms to be subject to a statutory “duty of care”.
The former Tory government originally said the “legal but harmful” provisions could apply to content posing a threat to public health, such as misinformation.
It comes as police said they would expect to keep making arrests for months in the wake of the riots, with more people jailed on Friday.
Meanwhile, a British businesswoman accused of being one of the first people to post the wrong name for the Southport attacker has said that it has “destroyed” her.
Bernadette Spofforth, 55, wrongly suggested on X that the suspect in the killing of three girls outside a Taylor Swift dance class was an asylum seeker who had recently arrived in the UK by boat.
The claim, which was promoted across social media by far-Right accounts and Russian bots, has been blamed for sparking the riots that spread across the country.
Mrs Spofforth, who lives in a million-pound farmhouse just outside of Chester, has denied that she was the first to post the message, saying that she simply made the mistake of repeating it.
People who encouraged the riots on social media have been jailed as part of the swift response by the justice system to the disorder.
A woman has also been arrested on suspicion of publishing written material to stir up racial hatred and false communications. The latter is a crime under the Online Safety Act, which makes it illegal to convey information that a person knows to be false if they intend the message to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience.
It means people who knowingly spread harmful fake news online can be prosecuted or punished but it is more difficult to crack down on the platforms that host the content.
The prospect of the “legal but harmful” clause being brought back will raise questions about who will decide what is classed as “harmful” and how it will be policed.
It has also sparked concerns that legitimate comments in newspapers could be censored by social media sites which consider it to be damaging.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, said: “You are opening the door to endless vexatious complaints, so that all news media and all comment becomes stifled because one reader may disagree with it and say it’s harmful to them because that’s how they feel.
“It risks setting up the online companies as judge and jury and using their own opinions to decide what is published, which may in themselves disagree with yours. But does that make it harmful?”
Esther McVey, the former Tory Cabinet minister, said “perfectly legal comments” could be targeted by an “unelected thought police”.
“This is the sinister and authoritarian side of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. This would drive a coach and horses through the principle of free speech,” she said.
“For the Government to allow the removal of perfectly legal comments by an unelected thought police would be completely unacceptable in what is supposed to be a free country.”
Sir Keir Starmer has clashed with Mr Musk after the tech boss claimed that Britain was heading for civil war during the riots.
The spat risks complicating the Government’s efforts to get social media companies, including X, to be more proactive in removing disinformation believed to be stoking the disorder.
Polling suggests that the majority of Britons think social media companies have done a bad job at tackling misinformation during the riots, with a new YouGov survey finding 71 per cent take that view.