UK minister tells social media sites to comply with law

Social media sites such as Facebook and X will have to comply with UK's law, Science Secretary Peter Kyle has said following tech giant Meta decided to change rules related to fact-checkers. 

Mark Zuckerberg, who owns Meta, said earlier this week that the shift applied in the US would mean content moderators and checkers will "catch less bad stuff" and would also reduce the removal of number of "innocent" posts. 

However, the science secretary said on BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show that the announcement was for America and for American service users. 

"If you come and operate in this country you abide by the law, and the law says illegal content must be taken down," he added.

Ian Russell, father of Molly Russell who took her own life at the age of 14 after seeing harmful and sensitive content online, urged the prime minister to take action against and tighten internet safety rules, saying the UK was "going backwards" with the issue.

He accused Zuckerberg and Elon Musk of moving away from safety towards a "laissez-faire, anything-goes model" and said they were moving "back towards the harmful content that Molly was exposed to".

Internet safety advocates and campaigners complain that there are gaps in the UK’s laws including a lack of specific rules dealing with live streaming or content that projects or promotes self-harm and suicide.

Kyle said current laws were "very uneven" and "unsatisfactory".

The Online Safety Act, passed in 2023, originally included plans to compel social media companies to remove "legal-but-harmful" content. The proposal received a backlash from critics saying it would lead to censorship.

The proposal was dropped and companies were required to give users more control to select and filter out content according to their preferences.

Kyle expressed frustration over the change and said the act had some "very good powers" he was using to come over safety concerns.

Companies that did not adhere to the law would go on to face strict actions, he said.