Online safety bill takes aim at ‘harmful’ Andrew Tate videos

The UK’s landmark Online Safety Bill could target ‘harmful’ content made by misogynistic influencers like Andrew Tate.

Lawmakers mentioned Mr Tate in a debate on changes to the Online Safety Bill regulating tech firms that push children towards such content.

‘A regulated company has a duty to design its service in a manner that does not harm children,’ said Baroness Kidron, who backed the amendments.

She said that firms had to be held accountable for algorithms that lead people to harmful content online.

‘They [algorithms] deliberately push 13-year-old boys towards Andrew Tate—not for any content reason, but simply on the basis that 13-year-old boys are like each other and one of them has already been on that site,’

‘To push hundreds of thousands of children towards Andrew Tate for no other reason than you benefit commercially from the network effect is a travesty for children and it undermines parents.’ said the baroness, a filmmaker and children’s online rights campaigner.

Previously, peers argued, the bill was going to regulate content only.

The House of Lords voted in favour of introducing a series of changes to the Bill intended to prevent platforms from being designed to push harmful content.

The government resisted the amendments arguing that the changes would delay other child protection measures included in the bill but lost by a majority of 72.

‘Amending the Online Safety Bill in this way will only weaken and ultimately delay protections for children in the long run, and it is disappointing that the House of Lords has voted to do so.’ said the government.

The bill which is steadily on its way to becoming law, seeks to regulate tech companies and protect users from ‘harmful’ content online.

Crossbench peer Baroness Kidron, who called for the changes, argued that while the bill targeted content such as harmful posts on social media, it did not address the harm caused by the way social media companies had designed their products.

Mr Tate is currently under house arrest in Romania having been charged with rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women. He has denied all wrongdoing

The self-proclaimed misogynist has amassed millions of followers on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

He has been banned from YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok for his misogyny. The former kickboxer was also banned from Twitter but has since been reinstated.

Baroness Kidron said in the House of Lords debate that the impact of algorithmic recommendations had ‘rocked our schools as female teachers and girls struggle with the attitudes and actions of young boys, and has torn through families, who no longer recognise their sons and brothers’.

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