Mis/disinformation
Overview
The OSB does little to address the problem of misinformation and disinformation on social media platforms or to mitigate the risks to society or to individual users from targeted activity designed to cause harm. The Government has amended the National Security Bill to provide a “bridge” between that legislation and the OSB to tackle “foreign interference by state actors” in elections. But the brand new offences in the National Security Bill are innovative and have no prosecution guidance (only the Attorney General can prosecute). Given this lack of contextual information, how will companies and OFCOM make judgements about applying the illegal content duty on foreign interference? We have also noted above that harmful health information and climate change disinformation are of such potential harms to adults that they should be included in the list of content covered by the proposed user empowerment tools; and we expect there to be significant debate in the Lords on the lack of action on media literacy which allows people to protect themselves from disinformation etc. Conversely the Government relies on a number of Counter Disinformation Units to challenge dangerous disinformation but the working of these bodies is opaque; there is no statutory basis nor any oversight.
Analysis
When Government Ministers are asked how they tackle harms from mis- or disinformation they refer to some unaccountable civil service teams, that involve direct state-based interference in online media:
- Counter-Disinformation Unit – DCMS-based; to address mainly COVID issues that breach
companies’ terms of service and, recently, Russia/Ukraine;
• Government Information Cell – FCO-based; war fighting and national security issues, we think,
mainly Russia/Ukraine;
• Rapid Response Unit – Cabinet Office-based; mainly proactive counter messaging.
These teams nudge service providers in different ways– for example, where there are threats to national security or the democratic process, or risks to public health. We have no record of their effectiveness: the groups do not publish their logs of action to any external authority for oversight of the things they are raising with companies using the privileged authority of HMG nor do they publish the effectiveness of these actions. Nor, as far as we know, are they rooted in expert independent external advisers. This very direct state interference in the media gives rise to concerns.
In the Public Bill Committee last summer, the then Minister’s response to an amendment to include health misinformation and disinformation in the Bill very clearly set out why this situation is problematic:
We have established a counter-disinformation unit within DCMS whose remit is to identify misinformation and work with social media firms to get it taken down. The principal focus of that unit during the pandemic was, of course, covid. In the past three months, it has focused more on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, for obvious reasons. In some cases, Ministers have engaged directly with social media firms to encourage them to remove content that is clearly inappropriate. For example, in the Russia-Ukraine context, I have had conversations with social media companies that have left up clearly flagrant Russian disinformation. This is, therefore, an area that the Government are concerned about and have been acting on operationally already. (Public Bill Committee 16/6/22)
Amendment
Until we know more about these units, where the boundary lies between their actions and that of a press office remains unclear. In the new regulatory regime, OFCOM needs to be kept up to date on the issues they are raising. The Government should reform this system and bring these units into the open. A longer-term strategic goal would be to set up a new external oversight body and move the current government functions under OFCOM’s independent supervision. We suggest a system of reporting that requires the Government to set out what their “operational” involvement with social media companies to address mis/disinformation has involved. A new clause would require reporting to OFCOM and Parliament.