(Pontypridd) (Lab):...I
will begin by touching on Labour’s broader concerns around the
Bill. As the Minister will be aware, we believe that the
Government have made a fundamental mistake in their approach to
categorisation, which undermines the very structure of the Bill.
We are not alone in this view and have the backing of many
advocacy and campaign groups including the Carnegie UK Trust,
Hope Not Hate and the Antisemitism Policy
Trust Categorisation of services based on size
rather than risk of harm will mean that the Bill will fail to
address some of the most extreme harms on the internet...
Sir (Kenilworth and Southam)
(Con): I shall speak to the amendments in my name and the
names of other right hon. and hon. Members, to whom I am grateful
for their support. I am also grateful to the organisations that
helped me to work through some of the problems I am about to
identify, including the Carnegie Trust, Reset and
the Antisemitism Policy
Trust...
(Brigg and Goole)
(Con):...When he gave evidence to the Bill Committee recently,
Danny Stone, the Antisemitism Policy Trust’s
very capable chief executive, pointed out that Amazon’s Alexa had
used just one comment posted by one individual on Amazon’s
website to inform potentially millions of users who cared to ask
that George Soros was responsible for all of the world’s evils,
and that Alexa had used a comment from another website to inform
those who searched for it that the humanitarian group the White
Helmets was an illicit operation founded by a British spy.
As we have seen throughout the covid pandemic, similar results
come up in response to other searches, such as those around
vaccines and covid. The Antisemitism Policy
Trust has previously demonstrated that Microsoft
Bing, the platform that lies behind Alexa, was directing users to
hateful searches such as “Jews are bastards” through
autocompletes, as well as pointing people to homophobic stories.
We even had the sickening situation of Google’s image carousel
highlighting Jewish baby strollers in response to people
searching for portable barbecues....
