Mr. Jack Eustace:

I wish to make two points, first, about our online responsibilities as individuals and, second, concerning the responsibilities of social media companies. In regard to individual behaviour, it is very important not to focus on warning people about what may happen if they engage with social media. That implies that it is individuals' responsibility not to be abused. We think it is better to focus on creating firm codes of conduct that apply to everyone who is active online, on a social media platform or elsewhere. It should be our responsibility not to abuse others on the platform. How that works must be very clearly laid out.

I wish to refer to the points made about social media companies' behaviour. Reference has been made to the point at which a piece of content is shared too much and taking it down is effectively beyond the power of these companies. It is important to outline how modern social media companies operate. Much has been said about the challenges of getting a piece of content taken down. While the companies may not have control over whether an individual uploads something, a piece of content, abusive or otherwise, does not get hundreds of thousands of views and shares because individual users choose to amplify it. A modern social media platform generally has algorithms that work behind the scenes to boost content. The technical details can be murky but as we will all be aware, content is generally boosted because it is controversial. It is content people want to click on because it might outrage them or elicit a reaction. Everyone who is on Twitter will be aware that users no longer have to actively amplify a piece of content to get it on to other people's timelines. Content is shared because it is popular. It is a chicken and egg phenomenon. However, that does not happen in a vacuum. It certainly does not happen because we all decide to boost a certain piece of content. It happens because of processes social media companies put in place to boost content. It is absolutely the case that the bigger a piece of content is, the more the companies are responsible. We should never assume that content simply gets out of a platform's control. The reason something gets out of control is the processes those platforms have actively put in place and propagated.