MPs warn ministers are not doing enough to tackle online misinformation

A cross-party group of MPs has warned that the government is still not doing enough to tackle the amplification of misinformation online, reigniting a debate over the responsibilities of social media platforms in the wake of public disorder.

The chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, Dame Chi Onwurah, wrote to the Technology Secretary, Liz Kendall, arguing that the existing legal framework fails to address the scale of the problem and pressing ministers to go further. The intervention followed renewed unrest connected to a fatal stabbing.

The committee's concern

The committee has long argued that the way social media platforms amplify content is central to the spread of harmful and misleading material. In earlier work it found that recommendation algorithms had played a significant part in driving violence during previous episodes of unrest, by pushing inflammatory and inaccurate content to large audiences.

MPs expressed frustration that the government had accepted only a handful of their earlier recommendations on how to address this amplification, and warned that the issue had not gone away. The latest unrest, they argued, showed the risks of leaving the framework largely unchanged.

At the heart of the committee's argument is a distinction between the creation of harmful content and its amplification. MPs accept that platforms cannot prevent every false claim from being posted, but contend that the design choices behind recommendation systems, which decide what content is pushed to which users, are within the companies' control and should therefore be open to greater scrutiny and regulation.

“The government must do more to stop the spread of misinformation online.”

— Dame Chi Onwurah MP, chair of the committee

The government's response

The Technology Secretary said the government was examining additional safeguards following the recent disorder, signalling an openness to further action while stopping short of committing to specific new measures. Ministers have generally pointed to existing online safety legislation and the powers of the regulator as the principal tools for tackling harmful content.

Critics counter that those tools were designed before the latest wave of unrest and may not be sufficient to deal with the speed at which misleading claims can circulate during a fast-moving crisis. Any move to tighten the rules, however, runs into difficult questions about free expression, with ministers wary of being seen to police legitimate debate even as they try to curb genuinely dangerous falsehoods.

There is also a practical dimension. Much of the activity in question takes place on platforms headquartered outside the United Kingdom, raising questions about how far domestic legislation and a domestic regulator can realistically compel changes to global systems. That cross-border challenge is one reason ministers have been cautious about promising quick fixes.

• The committee wrote to the Technology Secretary warning that current rules fall short
• Earlier work found recommendation algorithms helped drive violence during past unrest
• The government had accepted few of the committee's previous recommendations
• Ministers said they were examining additional safeguards after recent disorder

Background

The debate over online misinformation intensified after serious disorder in recent years, when false and inflammatory claims spread rapidly on social media in the hours after high-profile incidents. Those episodes prompted questions about whether platforms were doing enough to limit the reach of harmful content, and whether regulators had the powers and resources to hold them to account.

Select committees, which scrutinise the work of government departments, have become an important venue for that debate, using inquiries and public letters to press ministers and technology companies for clearer answers.

What happens next

The committee will expect a substantive reply from the department setting out what additional safeguards, if any, ministers intend to introduce. The exchange forms part of a wider and unresolved argument about how to balance free expression with the need to curb the spread of dangerous falsehoods, an argument likely to run for as long as social media shapes how the public receives news.

The pressure is unlikely to ease. Each fresh episode of disorder in which misleading content plays a part tends to revive the debate and to prompt new demands for action, while platforms and free-speech campaigners push back against measures they regard as overreach. Ministers are caught between those competing demands, expected to act decisively yet warned against curbing legitimate expression.

For the committee, the value of its intervention lies partly in keeping the issue visible between crises, when the political attention that follows an incident has faded. By publishing its concerns and pressing for answers, it aims to ensure that the question of how harmful content spreads online does not slip down the agenda until the next bout of unrest forces it back to the top.