Our submission to the Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee Inquiry

Clean Up The Internet submitted evidence to the UK Parliament’s Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, which is conducting an inquiry into social media, misinformation, and harmful algorithms, prompted in part by the riots which took place across England last summer. Our evidence to the inquiry has now been published on the committee website, and can be viewed here.

Our evidence draws on an earlier report, which we produced in the aftermath of the summer riots, and earlier research into the role of fake and anonymous accounts in spreading conspiracy theories, fuelling hate and abuse, and enabling fraud. It sets out the role of fake and anonymous in spreading false information and hateful and inflammatory content, and how the use of fake/anonymous accounts interacts with the use of other platform functionalities, including recommender algorithms and AI.

Different functionalities on social media platforms are often used in combination, including when they are exploited to do harm. Thus bad actors using fake accounts to seed and spread false and inflammatory content may use AI to create a greater volume of higher quality content. And thus inauthentic engagement from fake accounts can influence recommender algorithms, leading to inflammatory content being further amplified.

The committee’s inquiry is an important and welcome opportunity for parliamentarians to examine the way in which different platform functionalities are exploited by bad actors, how a “safety by design” approach could help, and the extent to which the Online Safety Act will help. We will be following the inquiry with interest.