UK is ready to take on Trump and Musk's free speech agenda over online safety, says security minister
21 January 2025, 20:17 | Updated: 21 January 2025, 21:14
Security Minister Dan Jarvis has said that social media companies must help to stop violent young men - and the government has the courage to take them on if needed.
Listen to this article
Loading audio...
Speaking to Andrew Marr on LBC he said that tech companies must honour their "legal and moral" obligations to remove illegal content.
"That [the Online Safety Bill] will provide some additional powers but the tech platforms need to honour their legal and moral responsibilities," Jarvis said.
"Where there is material online that is illegal, that needs to be removed, that needs to be taken down.
"There is a particular concern about boys, young men, who are accessing this material. It's not necessarily that they come from an ideological position but they have a fascination with extreme violence.
"It can't be right that they're able to access very violent material online, so where there is illegal material online, they [tech companies] should be taking it down."
Jarvis also failed to deny that the government might need additional powers to take on Elon Musk and Donald Trump's free speech agenda.
He said: "We've got to do everything we possibly can"
The Security Minister added that we need to "make sure that this particular cohort of the population that we're particularly are worried about - boys, young men who are satisfying this intense interest in extreme violence - aren't able to access the kind of materials that currently they are."
Asked by Marr whether the Government plans to tackle Silicon Valley giants such Meta and X (formerly Twitter) over their free speech argument, Jarvis said: "This isn't about free speech, it's about criminal material that is online. They should take that down."
He added there was a clear difference between the democratic right to exercise free speech and people and illegal content online.
"What we need to focus our efforts on and the government are looking very carefully at what more can be done and we want to work with the tech platforms and expect them to honour their legal and moral responsibilities," he said.
It comes after it emerged that police found images and documents relating to violence, war and genocide on Southport murderer Axel Rudakubana's devices at his home in Banks, Lancashire, after he carried the attack on July 29.
Prior to the Southport attacks Rudakubana was also convicted of a violent assault against a child at school, was found to have been in possession of a knife on at least ten different occasions and was able to buy a knife from Amazon.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper delivered a statement including the revelations in the House of Commons today after the Government’s decision to launch a public inquiry into the Southport attack.
Ms Cooper said that Rudakubana was referred to the Prevent anti-terrorism programme three times and a review found his case should not have been closed.
She also said that she would be urging tech firms to remove ‘dangerous material’ of the type accessed by Rudakubana.
Read more: Southport killer Axel Rudakubana ‘carried a knife more than ten times and bought blade on Amazon’
Meanwhile giant Meta announced on January 7 that it was ditching its fact checking service on Facebook and Instagram and replacing it with X-inspired "community notes" where users can decide on a post’s accuracy.
The parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Threads said it was ending third-party fact-checking on posts, first in the US and then across international markets.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the decision was about "restoring free expression" on its platforms and "reducing mistakes" it said automated content moderation systems were making.
Meta said it believed fact-checking amounted to censorship in some cases, accusing some fact-checkers of being influenced by their own biases.
But independent, UK fact-checking charity Full Fact said at the time that the decision was likely to help misinformation more easily spread online as a result.
