How much longer must we suffer the evils of social media? - Andrew Vine

As the horror of children murdered in Southport last week left our nation numb with shocked disbelief, it seemed nothing could add to the agony of a community which had suffered such loss.

But then social media did exactly that, spreading poisonous untruths about an alleged suspect that stoked racial hatred, resulting in rioting on the streets of a town mourning innocents killed as they enjoyed a dance class.

Only a week earlier, social media had fanned the flames of the riot in the Harehills suburb of Leeds, sowing distrust at a point when the community needed to come together if calm was to be restored.

Weeks before that, the general election campaign saw candidates attacked on social media, some in seats where MPs had stood down because they feared for their own safety and that of their families due to the volume and ferocity of online threats.

A new intake of MPs will be learning that their daily lives involve dealing with vile abuse and worrying if it might one day result in violence.

And if we go back a little way, we should remember Molly Russell, the 14-year-old girl from London who took her own life after being bombarded on social media with material promoting suicide and self-harm.

Her father, Ian, who has campaigned on online safety since losing his daughter, told the inquest into her death that she had been drawn into “the bleakest of worlds”.

Molly died in 2017, when it was already disturbingly apparent just how dark and perverted so much content on social media is. Seven years on, as we mourn more lost children, the online world that is causing such heartache is, if anything, even bleaker.

Cloaked in anonymity, the keyboard warriors threaten to kill or rape those elected to serve their communities, inflame racists to hurl bricks at police, spread damaging conspiracy theories that undermine trust in public life and its institutions, and drag children so deeply into despair they are unable to escape.

There is a near-total absence of compassion, consideration or human decency in this world where algorithms push material at the credulous or vulnerable, reinforcing prejudices or plunging them into nightmares.

And safely insulated against the pain and tragedy, those who operate the platforms make a fortune while maintaining the offensive fiction that their content has nothing to do with them.

Last year’s Online Safety Act was supposed to clean up the internet by imposing a “duty of care” on such platforms by requiring them to take action against harmful content, but there is precious little sign of it working.

As the disturbances in Harehills and Southport showed, the lightning speed at which rumour and falsehood spread – and the flashpoints they can create – far outpace the law.

With a new government in place, there is a pressing need for a rethink on online safety – and the responsibility that platforms should bear.

Mainstream publishers – such as this newspaper and its online presence – have long borne legal responsibility for their content and are subject to a proper regulatory framework.

The online giants have so far managed to slither away from a similar responsibility, advancing the disingenuous argument that they are not publishers, merely providers of platforms, and culpability for content lies with the people posting it.

This glaring anomaly must end if we are to clean up social media. Platforms are unquestionably the publishers of harmful and inflammatory material, and the tide of both will only be stemmed if they are classified as such and compelled to stop it appearing in the first place.

A “duty of care” is not enough. There needs to be a proper legal framework and sanctions to back it up.

And the cloak of anonymity needs to be snatched away from those pounding out offensive posts at their keyboards. The evildoers who drained all hope and joy from Molly Russell were never tracked down just as those who spread the lies that started a riot in Southport won’t be, sheltering as they do behind online nicknames.