Does UK's Online Safety Act cover misinformation? Well, that depends
- Reference: 1746001990
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/04/30/does_online_safety_act_cover/
- Source link:
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Southport, Merseyside, UK, July 30th 2024: A protestor stands near burning barricade facing riot police with brick in hand (click to enlarge) – Editorial credit: Ian Hamlett / Shutterstock.com
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch, Parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and the Department for Business and Trade, said misinformation and disinformation were covered by the [2]Online Safety Act , which came into force in the UK on March 17, 2025.
The minister was questioned during an April 29 hearing of the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, which was concerned about how the newly implemented legislation might have prevented the spread of violence in the UK last summer.
Riots broke out after three children were killed at a party in Southport, northwest England, in July. They followed false claims that the perpetrator was a Muslim and an asylum seeker, which, along with racist and anti-immigrant hatred, were spread on social media. Rioters targeted mosques, accommodation for asylum seekers, and stores they believed to be Muslim-owned over a stretch of days as far right groups capitalized on racially motivated thuggery. Violence and looting went on for days.
Speaking about the riots, MP and committee member Steve Race pointed out that the tech platforms had said in hearings that even if the Online Safety Act had been fully enacted at the time, it wouldn't have changed their response to events following the Southport attacks.
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Committee chair Chi Onwurah, a Labour MP, said there were no duties on communications regulator Ofcom to act with regard to misinformation, even if there were codes which do talk about misinformation and risks. "That seems to be a key issue," she said.
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Mark Bunting, online safety strategy delivery director at Ofcom, said the previous government had decided to remove legal material that might be harmful to adults from the scope of the of the Act, including forms of misinformation. However, he added Ofcom was still working on the subject and had announced membership of its Information Advisory Committee.
He later added that while it was "correct" to say the Act does not cover misinformation there was "one small caveat, which is that [it] did introduce the new offence of false communications with an intent to cause harm, and where companies have reasonable grounds to infer that there is intent to cause harm."
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Onwurah pointed out that intent in this context was very difficult to prove.
Baroness Jones said that if events similar to last summer's riots were to take place again, the illegal harms element of the Act would now apply. "I think that is the material difference. Our interpretation of the Act is misinformation and disinformation [are] covered under the illegal harms code and the children's code," she told the Committee.
Government [7]guidance published along with the Act said: "Mis- and disinformation will be captured by the Online Safety Act where it is illegal or harmful to children. Services will be required to take steps to remove illegal disinformation content if they become aware of it on their services."
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Civil servant Talitha Rowland, director for security and online harm at DSIT, told the committee that "one of the challenges of this area is mis- [and] disinformation isn't one thing. It can sometimes be illegal. It can be foreign interference. It can be content that incites hate or violence that's clearly illegal. It can also be below the illegal threshold, but nevertheless be harmful to children: that is captured."
She added that misinformation was also captured by many of the largest services to terms of service that the Act requires them to enforce consistently. "Saying [that] platforms told you that they wouldn't have necessarily done anything different: that at the moment is them marking their own homework. They will have to account to Ofcom as to whether they are actually doing those things, not be able to make that assessment and judgment for themselves," she said.
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Bunting added that there was a lack of case law showing how the Act might be interpreted on the point of misinformation. ®
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[1] https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/04/29/shutterstock_southport_riots.jpg
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/27/online_safety_act_charles/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aBJJL57sa6JUvdGChK0x0AAAAEI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aBJJL57sa6JUvdGChK0x0AAAAEI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aBJJL57sa6JUvdGChK0x0AAAAEI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aBJJL57sa6JUvdGChK0x0AAAAEI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-safety-act-explainer/online-safety-act-explainer#:~:text=Mis%2D%20and%20disinformation%20will%20be,of%20it%20on%20their%20services.
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/07/home_office_apple_backdoor/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/14/opinion_secret_state_security/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/06/uk_online_safety_act_bloggers/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/infosec_in_brief/
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aBJJL57sa6JUvdGChK0x0AAAAEI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
If I'm not mistaken, it's called politics.
Re: It doesn't matter
"violent tendencies"
He killed 3 girls and wounded several other people. This person had been referred to Prevent THREE times.
Re: It doesn't matter
And you think a reasonable reaction is to firebomb and attack completely unrelated mosques and muslim-owned stores?
Protests, perhaps even riots are one thing, but targeted attacks against a specific ethnic/religious group is something else completely. And no matter how you feel about it, the fact remains that the government shouldn't focus on legislation regarding misinformation spread, but instead focus on the core issues at hand: immigration policy and racism.
Re: It doesn't matter
"targeted attacks"
There were targeted attacks on specific businesses owned by specific groups after the Israeli retaliation to the Oct 7th attack.
The core issue at hand is what drove the person to murder 3 children. The reaction afterwards is due to years of inaction by the authorities. It has been an all too frequent occurrence that something bad happens and it turns out that the authorities knew the person and knew that they posed a danger yet with all the money being spent and departments formed they still failed in their job.
Re: It doesn't matter
Same after Harold Shippman kill 100s of people. I burned down a couple of hospitals to teach the NHS a lesson
Speed?
Misinformation, lies, stupidity, extreme views have ALWAYS been about. The legendary "man down the pub" has always been a reliable well of bullshit, but his reach was limited, his credibility was evidently limited, and the social propagation time of even the most compelling myth was very slow. As we all know, a few early "likes", replies or re-posts can cause a bullshit social media post to be spewed in near real time to many thousands, even millions of insufficiently critical users, and suddenly the mob are reaching for their pitchforks.
Would it be feasible to force big tech to adapt their algorithms so that posts from all unaccredited posters are disseminated MUCH more slowly, over days rather than seconds? So bullshit spreads at the speed of a flung cowpat, rather than almost the speed of light. Would that make a difference, could it be practical?
Re: Speed?
What to do with accredited posters on de facto Kremlin's payroll peddling disinformation?
Re: Speed?
What to do with accredited posters on de facto Kremlin's payroll peddling disinformation? …… elsergiovolador
A valid question to be asked of the BBC and all mainstream media channels too, elsergiovolador.
Re: Speed?
Social media must literally monitor their situation 24/7. It is like running a nuclear reactor with a decent chance of runaway and meltdown.
They have all necessary tools to throttle low reputation sources when fast-growing content matches sensitive keywords. This is not about freedom of speech, because the chain-reaction mechanism of the social media is a new artificial reality. People can still discuss and share privately.
Instead of political opinions it would be nice to read the analytics of which social media facilitated the riots.
Re: Speed?
>They have all necessary tools to throttle low reputation sources when fast-growing content matches sensitive keywords.
Facebook do, your local community / hobby / charity phpBB board doesn't
So either take the risk that your sewing circle all go to jail if somebody posts 4chan material, or close it down and just switch to Facebook groups.
Seeing as it was Muscolini and his Xitter "platform" that were the primary spreader of the misinformation and he's not in the UK, I fail to see how a UK law could have dealt with it unless it allowed for completely blocking the Xit Storm.
He has servers in the UK, so it absolutely does fall under the law.
And you just need a UK government that is prepared to go to a trade war with the USA about that
Feel good
Let's be honest here.
This is just one of those feel good policies, where politicians can tell themselves they done a good job, big corporations get extra layer of bureaucracy that keeps small players at bay and people affected by bowels of internet can feel reassured that government is taking it seriously.
Re: Feel good
Maybe I'm just cynical, but it feels more of a thought-police policy, where it can be bent to target any chosen individual or group on a whim.
Re: Feel good
When measuring a policy it is good to look at it through the lens of not what current government is going to do with it, but what the next evil government can do with it.
Surely this can be used to do many nefarious things if PM of the day likes to leave a moustache patch and pretends he wants to order five beers with his right hand stretched out during his morning bathroom routine.
Re: Feel good
I'd be more concerned about what the current evil government could do with it, rather than a future one.
The rioters are not the brightest bunch, and I suspect they rarely bother to read community notices and the likes on Twitter.
They're the same type of people who burnt the Spar down on an estate where I used to live because it opened on Christmas Day.
The next day they realised they'd destroyed their only source of Diamond White within a mile.
The same group were probably responsible for leaving a pediatrician in a wheelchair because his job title sounded dodgy.
Yeah, the online safety act is a nice idea, but it won't stop mis and disinformation spreading on Telegram, Whatsapp & "Truth" "Social"
Similar to the riots in the USA in the name of 'social justice' where the local shops are looted and burned quickly followed by the very same people complaining bitterly that their neighbourhood has no shops.
Parts of LA have never recovered from the riots in 1992.
Didn't one N Farage have something to do with the misinformation?
Should he be prosecuted for encitement?
Thats misinformation. You must be one of those low IQ types that gets fooled by it
"Bollocks and Lies"
> misinformation and disinformation
Oh come on, stop acting like American politicians, and call It what it is: Bollocks and Lies.
But most misinformation comes from the government.
I bet they end up having to explicitly exempt official news. Otherwise GBNews would have to close.
"Misinformation"? You mean all official statements about the terrorist attack for days after
A few hours after the attack the Home Office, the Prime Minsters Office etc knew all relevant information about the attacker - who they were, their background, their motivation etc - yet spent the immediate aftermath stonewalling and very deliberately shaping the media narrative to deflect blame away from the government , offices of state and most particularly, the PM.
You know, just like the propaganda BS you can see any day of week on Channel 1 RU. On Russian state TV. With the BBC TV news acting little different from Vremya.
The demonstrators (there was only a relatively small number of violent rioters) were on the streets because they knew they were being lied to. The vox pop had worked out immediately what had happened (as confirmed in the subsequent trial) despite the official denials and then the very heavy handed suppression of dissent by intimidation. If you have watched how the CRS deal with casseurs in France you can easily spot the difference between crowd control and very deliberate intimidation by forces of the state. The stark contrast with 2011 riots response was instructive.
For all you pearl clutching Guardian readers who never got to see Belfast, London/Derry etc back in the 1970's and 1980's that's what comes next. Due to the United Russia (Единая Россия) style suppression of free speech in the UK by very deliberately targeted intimidation of ordinary people with legitimate concerns about what has been done to their country this will only end one way. Its not going to be pretty. In some UK inner city areas it already is n't.
Dont believe me? Maybe check out what people like Prof David Betz is saying. About how close the UK is to a low intensity sectarian civil war. To anyone who saw "The Troubles" first hand everything he says rings true. Unfortunately. And he's a Canadian academic so has no political skin in the game.
It doesn't matter
Whether or not this misinformation could've been removed or not based on this act is a moot point.
This info spreads too fast to intervene in time, and the amount of communication channels is too large to coördinate takedowns, even if robust systems for this are in place. (i.e. complete control and censorship over private communications, and automated systems to accurately take down related messages).
The root of the problem is not misinformation, it's deep-rooted racism in a large enough portion of the community to cause nation-wide riots. They already have racist views and violent tendencies, they just needed an excuse.
What if the misinformation was true? It's a realistic scenario. Riots still would've happened, and it would still be nothing more than racist retaliatory behavior.
Any negative information about foreigners is going to reinforce their racist beliefs, you don't need to rely on "fake news" for that.
Stop trying to justify the existence of your censorship acts, and solve some real issues.
Talk about how widespread and how intense the racism in the country is, and what you're going to do about it.
Talk about your current asylum policy, and assess if there's any actual issues you can solve.
Some clever misdirection here, they try to convince us the act is a good thing and solves real problems, and they avoid addressing difficult and controversial issues at the same time.