THE arrest of Internet influencer Andrew Tate on suspicion of human trafficking brought his extreme online misogyny and hate speech into the spotlight, with debate swirling around whether lawmakers and social media platforms did enough to stop its spread.
The former kickboxer, who amassed millions of followers on social media, was detained last month and is being investigated by Romanian authorities for allegedly forming a crime ring to sexually exploit women.
TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube suspended Tate's official accounts last August, but video clips of Tate shared by his followers continue to circulate, and his Twitter account was reinstated in November after new owner Elon Musk took over.
Now, advocacy groups in Britain that say social media firms are failing to curb harmful content, are looking to the proposed Online Safety Bill to hold big tech firms and their bosses accountable.
The bill, which is awaiting passage in Parliament, will require online platforms to protect users from content that is illegal, such as terrorism, child sex abuse and revenge pornography, and that violates their rules on hate speech. It will also criminalise cyber-flashing — when a man sends a photo of his penis via a digital device — and the non-consensual sharing of manufactured intimate images (known as deepfakes).
"Women are not safe online and something really needs to be done about this. The government has that opportunity with the Online Safety Bill," Jess Eagelton, policy manager at domestic abuse charity Refuge told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Companies could face fines of up to 10 per cent of their turnover if they do not remove illegal content, and bosses of big tech firms could face jail time for ignoring the new rules.
"(The bill) produces, for the first time ever, real disincentives to sitting on your hands," said Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). More than one in three British women have experienced online abuse, according to a 2021 Refuge report.
In recent years, social media platforms have beefed up safeguards against harassment and bullying — such as Facebook's rule of removing sexualised attacks on public figures and mass harassment of individuals through direct messaging.
Still, social media firms largely fail to respond to misogynistic abuse: Instagram, owned by Meta, did not respond nine times out of 10 when women reported abusive direct messages on the platform, a study by CCDH last year showed.
And, nearly half the accounts that Twitter failed to remove for abusing women went on to post misogynist content again.
Tech firms are also slow to respond to domestic abuse victims' requests to take down intimate images, according to Refuge.
"We need regulation to prioritise domestic abuse that we see many platforms just ignore," said Refuge's Eagelton, who welcomed the government's intent to make coercive behaviour via social media a priority offence in the bill.
But, the bill has gaps, said Eagelton. Refuge is campaigning alongside online abuse charity Glitch and other women's groups for the bill to require platforms to incorporate a Violence Against Women and Girls code of practice. The code would require platforms to carry out risk assessments that address online abuse of women and girls and take measures to mitigate it.
In November, the government replaced a provision that protected adult users from harmful content that is not a criminal offence, with a requirement that social media firms enforce their own rules and offer users tools to filter out such content.
But, the majority of online abuse women face falls below the criminal threshold, according to online abuse charity Glitch.
Rights groups have warned that algorithms on social media platforms can exacerbate the spread of hate speech, and that changes to the bill shift the focus onto how sites are used, and away from regulating the way platforms work. Proposed user tools would only hide harmful content rather than reduce the level of abusive content circulating.
An investigation by The Observer last year found that followers of Tate, who has talked about hitting and choking women and trashing their belongings, were told to flood social media with his most controversial clips to get more views and engagement. Videos of Tate on TikTok have been viewed over 11 billion times. But, only a small portion of viral Tate content came directly from his accounts, with the majority circulated by other social media users.
The writer is from the Reuters news agency