My Lords, the issue of access to data for researchers is very familiar to all those involved in debates on the Online Safety Bill, now an Act. The
issue is relatively simple and I am not going to spell it out in great detail. I will leave it to others to give more concrete examples.
The issue is that in the tech industry, there is a vast amount of data about the effect of social media and the impact on consumers of the technologies, algorithms and content that are in circulation. But there is a blackout when it comes to academics, epidemiologists, journalists or even parliamentarians who are trying to have a dig around to understand what is happening. What is happening on extremism or child safety? What is happening with fraud or to our national security? What is the impact on children of hours and hours spent on YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat and all the other technologies that are now consuming billions of hours of our time?
In other walks of life, such as the finance and retail sectors, there are open platforms where regulators, researchers and even the public can have a peek at what is going on inside. This is not commercial access; instead, it is trying to understand the impact on society and individuals of these very important and influential technologies. That kind of transparency absolutely underpins trust in these systems. The data is essential to policy-making and the surveillance is key to security.
What I want to convey is a sense that there is a very straightforward solution to this. There is a precedent, already being rolled out in the EU, that creates a good framework. Amendment 135 has been thoroughly discussed with the department in previous debates on the Online Safety Bill, and I thank the Minister and the Secretary of State for a number of meetings with parliamentarians and civil society groups to go through it. The idea of creating a data access pathway that has attached to it a clear validation system that secures the independence and privacy of researchers is relatively straightforward. Oversight by the ICO is something that we all agree gives it a sense of credibility and straightforwardness.
I want to try to convey to the Minister the importance of moving on this, because it has been discussed over several years. The regulator is certainly a supporter of the principle: Melanie Dawes, the CEO of Ofcom, gave testimony during the Joint Committee on the Online Safety Bill in which she said it was one of the things she felt was weak about that Bill. She would like to have seen it strengthened up. It was therefore disappointing that there was not a chance to do that then, but there is a chance to do it now.
During the passage of the Online Safety Act, the Minister also made commitments from the Dispatch Box about returning to this subject during the passage of this Bill, so it feels like a good moment to be discussing this. There are 40 impressive civic society groups that have written in clear terms about the need for this, so there is a wide body of opinion in support. One reason why it is so urgent that we get this measure in the Bill—and do not kick the can down the road—is that it is currently getting harder and harder for researchers, academics and scientists to look into the impact of the actions of our technology companies.
Twitter/X has withdrawn almost all access to the kind of data that makes this research possible. Facebook has announced that it will be stopping the
support of CrowdTangle, the very important facility it had created, which had become a very useful tool. The feedback from the Meta live content library that is its theoretical replacement has not been very positive; it is a clunky and awkward tool to use. TikTok is a total black box and we have no idea what is going on in there; and the action by Elon Musk against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which he pursued in the courts over its analysis of data, gives a sense of the very aggressive tone from tech companies towards researchers who are trying to do what is widely considered to be very important work.
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At the same time, the social media companies, rather than falling back, are becoming more and more influential. More hours are spent on social media by the public, and the algorithms are becoming cleverer at influencing behaviour. As we approach the British and American elections, we will see those social media companies being incredibly influential in the outcome of the politics. We saw that in the Taiwanese election last month: the Chinese Government did a huge amount to try to change the vote and, I am sad to say, probably had a little bit of an impact. The imminent arrival of very large-scale AI and the metaverse is just going to accelerate that influence.
For those reasons, I ask the Minister to explain a little more what the obstacles are to getting such a system in place, in order to try to make some kind of commitment to a timetable for holding tech companies to account. If he has reservations as to why the measure cannot be implemented immediately and can share with us the basis for those, I would be enormously grateful. I beg to move.