Ms Elizabeth Farries:

We are hearing very concerning propositions are being raised to the committee right now in the names of rights and we are concerned because they are, frankly, quite alarming. The term "cyberbullying" is as concerning and challenging to legislate for as the term "online harm". Vaguely defined terms such as this may include illegal content but it might also capture users' behaviours that are deemed harmful but not illegal and not sufficient to take down. This, therefore, would have the effect of censoring speech and certain associated rights attached to that.

The UK Online Harms White Paper has introduced duty of care but that has been robustly criticised by qualified rights advocates. Duty of care imposed on social media platforms, combined with heavy fines, creates incentives for platform companies to block online content, even if its illlegality is doubtful and even if it serves to further conversations about online abuse.

We have seen content moderation by social media companies. Please forgive me, they are actively engaged. They are not unengaged in this scenario. We have seen them get it wrong repeatedly. Women of colour complaining online about their experience of racist harassment will be censored. That should not be censored. We need to make sure that we do not incentivise the removal of speech to protect certain interest groups.

I refer to this dangerous proposition about user verification. We do not support such proposals. The ICCL is part of an international network of civil liberties organisations. My colleagues in the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights have talked about an activist who was imprisoned, egregiously, for simply calling on people to gather and speak against their experiences of harm. In 2013, Alaa Abdel Fattah was violently arrested for talking about issues on Facebook and Twitter and he was only released last March. The idea that people would be unable to speak out anonymously about their experiences of harm in areas where autocratic regimes erode civil rights is a problem. That is something we absolutely need to protect not just gender considerations but intersectional considerations.