Image source, HoC

Edleen John says there needs to be mechanisms to prevent people creating an account, sending abuse, and then deleting the accounts.

She says it should be possible for new social media accounts to have a cooling off period, or some default settings, which prevent abuse being sent.

Sanjay Bhandari, chair of Kick It Out, a football anti-racism charity, says that the problem is the experience is so "frictionless" to allow people to send abuse without any real effort.

In years gone by, he says, to publicly share abuse you'd have to stand on Speakers' Corner, external, these days, footballers can receive abuse "straight into their eyes" as they sit in their living rooms.

Labour's Lord Stevenson of Balmacara asks if Ofcom is the right company to regulate this content.

Mr Bhandari says he believes it is, as they already deal with telecoms and communications more generally.

He says a big problem with learning how to regulate social media companies is because there is no established rule book on how to regulate such companies. There are no rules which can easily be borrowed and repurposed for the UK, he says.

Image source, HoC

Conservative MP Dean Russell asks whether the world of football is "going backwards" on racist abuse directed at players.

Rio Ferdinand says he thinks it is - and the "police forces are telling us that".

He says that without further action, racist abuse online can have a "knock-on effect," leading to more abuse being directed at players in stadiums.

Image source, HoC

Rio Ferdinand is asked about the impact on professional footballers of receiving racist abuse online.

He says the abuse can affect their self-esteem and their mental health.

He adds that it can also have an impact on the family members of the sportspeople on the receiving end. He says he has seen members of his own family "disintegrate".

He says he has had to explain to his own children "what the monkey emoji means" in the abuse he has received.

Campaigner points to misinformation harmpublished at 11:18 British Summer Time 9 September 2021

11:18 BST 9 September 2021

Jane Wakefield
Technology reporter

An impressive first testimony from Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of Center for Countering Digital Hate as MPs begin to mull exactly what the hugely ambitious Online Safety bill will look like in its final form.

He spoke powerfully about the real-world consequences of misinformation, whether that be around Covid vaccines or QAnon.

Misinformation was addictive and reading one conspiracy theory would lead automatically to another via the algorithms the social media platforms used, he said.

While he lauded the ambition of the legislation, he also voiced doubts that Ofcom would be able to bring the tech giants to account. His worry was that these powerful Silicon Valley-based companies would treat the regulator with contempt, he said.

But, he added, regulation had to happen because misinformation being pumped out by the tech platforms was "colouring the lens" through which people saw the world.

And the powers need to be toughened, including making tech execs criminally liable for the content on their sites.

Rio Ferdinand says abuse online is "normalising" racist behaviour and language.

He says when there are "no repercussions" for racists online, then "people are going to think it's normal".

He adds that people are able to "hide behind the curtain" of anonymity online.

Image source, HoC

Edleen John from the Football Association is asked about his experience of working with social media companies over removing racist content.

She says they have been working with platforms for years - but they are "not putting in place the protections needed" to protect people in the football industry from abuse online.

Asked the same question, Sanjay Bhandari, chair at anti-racism group Kick it Out, says it has been a "deeply unpleasant experience".

He says sometimes the London-based offices of companies will be interested in certain responses, but "California says no".

He says when three black players for England missed penalties in the Euro 2020 final, his first thought was "let's see what happens on social media".

"It's totally disheartening... the players shouldn't have to go through this," he tells the Committee.

He says YouTube is very good at removing copyrighted content - he says he see this on his on You Tube channel - but social media companies including YouTube cannot deal with certain use of emojis or abusive comments.

Racist abusers are "allowed to stand behind a curtain" as it currently stands, he states.

Image source, HoC

Rio Ferdinand has begun giving evidence.

He starts by saying he is "baffled" by racist abuse directed at footballers. "It's disheartening" he says.

"In the 70s and 80s it was something that was a lot more common.

"We went through a period where it was maybe behind the scenes a bit more, but now you can see in the data it is here and it is back."

Imran Ahmed has ended his evidence.

The committee are taking a short break before hearing from the second panel of witnesses.

Rio Ferdinand, football pundit and former England international will be joined by the Chair of Kick It Out Sanjay Bhandari and Edleen John from the FA will discuss online racism against footballers and their assessment of the draft Online Safety bill in tackling the issue.

Do stay with us.

Imran Amhed is asked about the new powers that will be given to the broadcast regulator, Ofcom, to regulate social media companies under the Online Safety Bill.

He says the draft law is the best in the world - but under the bill, Ofcom will still lack independent auditing powers to verify how much harmful content platforms are taking down.

"You cannot ask Facebook to mark their own homework," he says.

"Self-regulation is over - it's got to be over," he adds.

Imran Ahmed says there should be more transparency about where the money from online advertising is spent.

He says this would "clear up the problem immediately" because no company "would want to advertise on a malignant content site".

SNP MP John Nicolson returns to misinformation on vaccines and asks what causes people to go against widely held medical science and suddenly ignore requests to get a coronavirus vaccine.

Imran Ahmed says there are 60m people following Covid disinformation on social media sites.

Mr Ahmed says he believes that many people who are in hospital who haven't had vaccines are people who were waiting to see if there were bad side effects from the vaccine. This hesitancy, he says, was caused by the disinformation.

"Anti-vaxxers are like any form of groomer or recruiter," he says, "this is about making people not trust the authorities that they normally trust".

Mr Nicolson asks what the "battle plan" is for the social media platforms long term.

Mr Ahmed says the social media companies follow four Ds: deny there's a problem, deflect by saying this is a societal problem, delay the things that need to be done, and then dollars are thrown at the problem in the form of lobbying governments to not make changes.

"The tentacles of big tech are everywhere," he warns that many organisations defending the social media platforms are ultimately funded by the social media companies themselves.

Image source, HoC

Lord Clement-Jones asks whether the committee should distinguish between how misinformation is spread on larger and smaller platforms - which is defined in the bill.

Imran Ahmed says the bill "will struggle to find the right balance".

He says the committee should focus "as much as possible on where the greatest quantum of harm" is.

And he alleges: "The greatest quantum of harm is caused by Twitter, which is vital in the shaping of discourse, and Google, which owns YouTube, and is one of the most resistant platforms to taking action to enforce their own rules."

He says his team tries to measure content by the companies' own rules, and the enforcement of the rules.

"One of the things I would urge is that, at the moment the decision making by companies the transparency of how they enforce their rules just is severely lacking".

Imran Ahmed says he has always found it "remarkable" that social media companies are still able to escape culpability for the content on their platforms.

He says when other products people use were causing harm, they weren't able to "get away with this".

Previously, when he revealed to Facebook the level of disinformation on the site, he says a Facebook executive thanked him and told him they didn't realise the extent of harm on the site. He said his organisations, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, have funding of hundreds of thousands, but Facebook has revenue in the billions.

He alleges that Facebook doesn't want to look for harm on their site to avoid then having to become responsible for it.

Imran Ahmed says one of the effects of racist abuse directed at black England footballers is to signal to people from ethnic minorities the sites "aren't for you".

He says social media sites are not just for entertainment, but "for better or worse" important places where information in the modern world is communicated.

He says the racism on the site is "literally the counter-Enlightenment at play".

Mr Ahmed talks about research his group has undertaken into "superspreaders" of anti-Covid misinformation.

He has his group has identified a dozen people who are responsible for spreading misinformation, with 97 accounts between them. But he says only 47 accounts have been removed.

Turning to the bill, Mr Ahmed says there is a "lack of audit" in the legislation to independently verify what social media companies have and haven't taken down.

Image source, HoC

Conservative MP Damian Collins, who chairs the committee, begins by asking Mr Ahmed about the sources of conspiracy theories online about Covid vaccines.

He replies that social media companies are "failing to act on anti-vaccine lies". He also says the companies have failed to act on racism directed at sportspeople and "misinformation" about US elections.

On anti-vaccination information specifically, he says a small number of accounts are responsible for a large share of the misinformation on the internet.

He also says a recent decision from Facebook to downgrade news and promote groups from users' feeds means many people's experience of the platform has been "infiltrated by bad actors".

Image source, HoC

Image source, HoC

The hearing has started.

Imran Ahmed, CEO of the think tank the Centre for Countering Digital Hate has begun his evidence.

A new campaign has said that the draft Online Safety Bill harms free speech and hands policing the internet to Silicon Valley.

The "Legal to Say. Legal to Type" campaign says if it becomes law, US tech firms would gain too much power.

The draft bill places new duties on social media firms to remove harmful or illegal content.

Minister say the companies should have safeguards to ensure freedom of speech.

Read more here.

In April, football clubs, players, athletes and a number of sporting bodies held a four-day boycott of social media in an attempt to tackle abuse and discrimination on their platforms.

Match of the Day pundits and friends Ian Wright and Alan Shearer sat down to share an open and honest conversation about the impact of online racist abuse on those who receive it.