Statement on the Government's response to the SIT Committee report on Social Media, Misinformation and Harmful Algorithms

The Government has today (17 October) published its response to the report of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee on Social Media, Misinformation and Harmful Algorithms.

We are disappointed it has refused to implement a number of the Committee’s recommendations relating to online advertising.

In early August, along with nine other organisations with an interest in tackling the harms caused by unregulated online advertising, the Online Safety Act Network wrote to the DSIT Secretary of State, the Home Secretary, the DCMS Secretary of State and the Business and Trade Secretary, along with senior No10 and Home Office advisers, to urge the Government to accept the Committee’s recommendations in full.

We emphasised that the SIT Committee’s report had accurately identified the role that online advertising - and the underlying business model of social media platforms - plays in the ”viral spread of harmful misinformation”. As the Committee noted, this has real-world consequences. But successive governments have failed to get to grips with the issue.

We set out a series of policy solutions for the Government to help inform their response to the Committee and offered our support in the development of the proposals. We include those in the annex to this statement, attached as PDF below.

Not one of the recipients of the letter responded to it, or even acknowledged it. The publication of the Government’s response today reveals why. There is no political will to address the problem. The split of responsibilities for tech, advertising and fraud sits across different Departments, and different regulators, allowing individual Secretaries of State to pass the buck. Meanwhile, the financial and economic costs of inaction are borne by the Government as a whole.

In its response to the Committee’s findings on the Digital Advertising Market, the Government says that it will “continue to review the regulatory landscape in this area, including the options available to address the identified issues”. It refers to the work of the Online Advertising Taskforce and the Advertising Standards Authority but suggests no new action from either. The Government says “we are closely monitoring the implementation of the Online Safety Act to identify areas we can build on it” and that it will “explore options for ‘Know Your Customer’ checks alongside other possible interventions, including our continued work with the Online Advertising Taskforce, to address any harms linked to digital advertising”. No timescales for this work are given.

A Government that is serious about economic growth should be acting without delay to stem the financial losses borne by businesses and individuals who are victims of online fraud and should no longer turn a blind eye to the billions of pounds lost to the Exchequer from ad-funded crime. A Government that wishes to protect our democracy and our information environment from the malign influence of those who seek to destroy it cannot wait any longer to address the role that the advertising business model plays in undermining information integrity.

The Government, in its response today, has demonstrated it cares about neither.