On Wednesday 1 February, the Online Safety Bill returns to the House Of Lords, with a goal to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online. The bill seeks to tackle a wide range of harmful content - with special attention on protecting children. This is what our expert Shweta Singh, from Warwick Business School at the University Of Warwick has to say.

Shweta Singh, Assistant Professor of Information Systems and Management, and a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, said, “To date, lawmakers have largely allowed social media platforms to mark their own homework – prompting outrage from both carers of vulnerable youngsters and defenders of free speech. The route between moderation and censorship is a tightrope.

“Meanwhile here in the UK the government’s flagship internet regulation – the online safety bill, nearly four years in the making – is treading a difficult path between free speech and protection as it enters what many hope is the final stage.

“But legislators need a better understanding of the technology they are seeking to govern. If tech businesses know that an extra level of Responsible AI, that could better govern reams of content, they nonetheless have little incentive to impose it.

“Whistleblowers in recent years have spoken out against Meta’s algorithms and moderation methods and their harmful impact on individuals, accusing them of putting profits over people.

“These are commercial platforms – fewer users mean less cash. But if regulators understood what is possible – ‘intelligent’ technology that reads between the lines and sifts benign communication from the sinister, they could demand its presence in the laws they’re seeking to pass.”