Article by Hannah Boland for the Telegraph - published 14 October 2020 Britain's digital levy has "failed" in getting the likes of Amazon to pay more into UK coffers, and ministers must "go back to the drawing board", MPs have said. The comments follow a report in the Times that officials had admitted that Amazon […]
Article by Dan Avery and Stacey Liberatore for MailOnline The day after Facebook announced it will launch its Oversight Board in October to determine what's allowed on the site, critics launched their own alternative. The Citizens, a UK nonprofit, unveiled the 'Real Facebook Oversight Board' on Friday to address the social media giant's policies and […]
Article by Emma Yeomans and Tom Knowles for The Times - published 1 August 2020 Social media influencers and celebrities with millions of followers are boosting anti-vaccination messages worldwide, as more people say that they will not take a coronavirus vaccine. Politicians and experts have given warning that the rapid spread of misinformation about a Covid-19 […]
Article written for the Telegraph, published 30 July 2020 The lobby of the Marriott hotel at Westminster Bridge may seem like an unlikely setting for a significant act in the struggle by policy makers to expose the inner workings of the world's leading tech companies. It was here however, in 2018, that the House of […]
Article by Eleanor Langford for PoliticsHome - published 29 July 2020 As MPs, journalists and concerned users boycott Twitter over its stance on hate speech, Eleanor Langford asks whether the Government can — and should — do more to clamp down on social media firms. Twitter was noticeably quieter this week as users logged off […]
Written for the Daily Telegraph - 7 July 2020 The public have had enough of the harms caused by social media companies and they're demanding tough action. Polling released last night by campaigning organisation the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) shows that the majority of the British public support both financial and criminal sanctions against […]
Article by Arvind Hickman for PR Week UK - published 2 July 2020 The former chair of a parliamentary committee charged with investigating social-media platforms has called for the deliberate spreading of harmful content on social media to be criminalised, with users and social-media companies both legally liable. Damian Collins, MP for Folkestone and Hythe, […]
Article by James Cook for the Daily Telegraph - published 30 June 2020 Former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and other members of Facebook's oversight board are under growing pressure to speak out as the social network battles claims of hate speech. The Supreme Court-style board-set up to rule on controversial ethical issues-has so far remained silent […]
Article by James Titcombe for the Daily Telegraph - published 14 June 2020 History's most famous laws are often its shortest. The US constitution clocked in at just four pages; the 10 commandments on two stone tablets. And the internet, while it put an infinity of content at its users' fingertips, owes its current form […]
Article by David Wooding and published 12 April 2020 An MP is backing a new way to counter coronavirus conspiracy theories sweeping the internet during lockdown. Tory Damian Collins is helping to launch a free fact-checking service to nail dangerous lies about the disease. One false rumour blamed mobile phone masts for spreading the virus and […]