BBC presenter Amol Rajan has accused the government of doing “absolutely zilch” to tackle Elon Musk after the X boss used his platform to claim civil war is “inevitable” in the UK.
Musk also dubbed the prime minister “Two Tier Keir” amid right-wing claims that police act more harshly against white protesters than those from ethnic minority backgrounds.
On Radio 4′s Today programme this morning, Rajan asked policing minister Diana Johnson why the government is not taking tougher action against social media platforms, like X, which have been accused of spreading misinformation over the murder of three young girls in Southport last week.
He said: “The Online Safety Bill, which was passed into law last October, still hasn’t come into force because [broadcast watchdog] Ofcom is still consulting on some codes of practice.
“Don’t events of this week show that we need it to be enforced immediately?”
Johnson said Ofcom wrote to the social media companies yesterday urging them to take action, but Rajan hit back: “That’s not the same thing as actual criminal prosecution. These types of regulations and laws about online safety have been talked about for eight years. They’ve been delayed and delayed and delayed.
“I know you’ve just got into power, but I wonder whether an early move might be saying ‘you know what, no more delays. These criminal prosecutions for senior executives, these massive fines for global revenue, lets make it happen now’.
“With the greatest of respect for Ofcom, them writing a letter saying ’up with this we will not put’ is utterly meaningless, isn’t it?”
The minister said: “If there are criminal offences being committed on social media platforms now then these social media companies have an obligation now to deal with that.”
Rajan told her: “They’re not taking it very seriously, are they?”
Johnson replied: “If they’re having incitement to violence on their platforms that needs to be dealt with now, today. We don’t need the Online Safety Act to deal with that.
“Of course, the events of the last few days has meant that we need to look very carefully at what more we can do.”
Rajan said: “I just put it to you that the rules that we’ve currently got in place are completely insufficient. A strong letter from Ofcom with a nice signature and a nice bit of branded paper is basically meaningless.
“What’s actually going on on one social media platform is that people have disseminated lies and conspiracies with real world consequences and you’ve got an owner talking about civil war in Europe and what are the consequences? Absolutely zilch. And I put to you that that requires a legislative response.”
Johnson said: “We fully understand and appreciate the problem that we have with social media and that is going to have a cross-government approach.”