Social media should be fined for delay to remove offensive content

The failure of social media companies to deal with illegal and dangerous material posted on internet sites was described Monday by a British MP as a disgrace.

Yvette Cooper, chair of the British parliament's home affairs committee, launched her attack in a report which heavily criticised the failure of social media companies to deal with illegal and dangerous material posted on the internet.

The all-party committee of MPs strongly criticised social media companies for failing to take down seriously illegal content, saying the companies are "shamefully far" from taking sufficient action to tackle hate and dangerous content on their sites.

The committee has called on the government to assess whether failure to remove illegal material is a crime and whether the law should be strengthened.

They want the government to consult on a system of escalating sanctions to include big fines for social media companies who fail to quickly remove illegal content.

The MPs say social media companies that fail to proactively search for, and remove illegal material, should pay towards the cost of the police doing the job instead.

The report says: "Given their immense size, resources and global reach, the committee considers it completely irresponsible that social media companies are failing to tackle illegal and dangerous content and to implement even their own community standards."

"Social media companies' enforcement of their own community standards is weak, haphazard and inadequate," say the MPs.

The committee wants the government to conduct a review of the entire legal framework around online hate speech, abuse and extremism and ensure the law is up to date.

Committee chair Cooper said: "They have been asked repeatedly to come up with better systems to remove illegal material such as terrorist recruitment or online child abuse. Yet repeatedly they have failed to do so. It is shameful." "Given their continued failure to sort this, we need a new system including fines and penalties if they don't swiftly remove illegal content," said Cooper.