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Twitter criticised by Commons Committee for failure to tackle abusive tweets

Google's vice president for public policy in Europe, the Middle East and Africa Dr Nicklas Berild Lundblad, Twitter's vice president for public policy and communications in Europe, the Middle East and Africa Sinead McSweeney, and Facebook's director for public policy Simon Milner, give evidence to the Home Affairs Committee.
Google's vice president for public policy in Europe, the Middle East and Africa Dr Nicklas Berild Lundblad, Twitter's vice president for public policy and communications in Europe, the Middle East and Africa Sinead McSweeney, and Facebook's di Google's vice president for public policy in Europe, the Middle East and Africa Dr Nicklas Berild Lundblad, Twitter's vice president for public policy and communications in Europe, the Middle East and Africa Sinead McSweeney, and Facebook's director for public policy Simon Milner, give evidence to the Home Affairs Committee.

Twitter has been criticised for repeatedly failing to remove abusive tweets, despite being alerted to the posts by female MPs who have been targeted by online trolls.

Earlier this week the online social media company closed down the Twitter accounts of far right spokespeople, Jayda Fransen and Paul Golding, as well as the Britain First official Twitter account.

It came after Ms Fransen was arrested in Belfast last Thursday, shortly after appearing in court charged with using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, during a rally at city hall in August. She was further charged with an incident at a peace wall in west Belfast on December 13 which was posted online.

The deputy leader of Britain First gained notoriety after anti-Muslim posts were retweeted by US president Donald Trump.

The organisation's leader Paul Golding was also arrested and charged with comments he made during the August rally in Belfast city centre.

Labour MP Yvette Cooper, speaking at the Commons' Home Affairs Select Committees today, said it was hard to believe that enough was being done to tackle hate crime, with posts reported months ago remaining on the platform.

Senior figures from Twitter, Facebook and Google faced the committee, which is investigating how companies are dealing with abusive content.

Ms Cooper, said no action had been taken against anti-Semitic tweets shown to representatives of Twitter at a previous hearing.

They included abuse directed at Labour MP Luciana Berger, who has been a high-profile target of online trolling, which has already been flagged to the platform twice.

Twitter's Sineád McSweeney, vice president of public policy and communication for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, appeared in front of the committee to answer questions.

Ms McSweeney, who was appointed to the job in 2016, previously served as director of communications for An Garda Síochána and prior to that as senior communications director with the PSNI.

She has also held a number of political advisory positions in the Irish government, serving as special adviser to two attorney generals, David Byrne and Michael McDowell.

Ms Cooper said to Ms McSweeney; "We sat in this committee in a public hearing and raised a clearly vile anti-Semitic tweet with your organisation.

"What is it that we have got to do to get you to take it down?"

"I'm kind of wondering what we have to do".

Ms McSweeney, responded saying she did not know why the tweets remained, adding: "I will come back to you with an answer as to why they are still on the platform."

Ms Cooper said her office had also reported a series of violent tweets, including threats against Theresa May, a former prime minister, and racist abuse towards shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, which had not been taken down.

She disputed Ms McSweeney's suggestion that offensive tweets would normally be removed from the site within two days of being reported.

Ms Cooper said: "The problem is, that is just not people's experience at all.

"Instead people's experience is reporting a whole series of things and just getting no response at all, and including victims of serious abuse and hate crime, also reporting them and getting no response at all."

Ms McSweeney's said that addressing hate was "not a simple problem in society", adding that Twitter had multiple policies attempting to combat abuse, and that a change in the climate of political discussion could not be ignored.