Google and Facebook have ‘social responsibilities’, says Ofcom chief

The chief executive of media regulator Ofcom has said technology companies such as Google and Facebook have “social responsibilities” and it is “absolutely right to ask what society should expect of those organisations”.

Ed Richards said it was important to ask questions about “what goes over these networks and to what extent we as a society are comfortable with the world that is creating”.

His comments came after the new director of GCHQ, Robert Hannigan, called on US tech companies to do more in the fight against terrorism in the Financial Times, declaring that privacy had never been an “absolute right”.

Ofcom’s chair, Patricia Hodgson, said: “It’s certainly the case that there has been a struggle to keep up with this shift [in] the use of social media, the most extreme abuses of it, for terrorism or illegal pornography.”

Richards, the former adviser to Tony Blair who will step down from Ofcom at the end of this year, said: “I think it’s fair to say that there are social responsibilities that come with a media that are as prevalent and significant as those social media [companies] have become.

“It’s absolutely right to ask what society should expect of those organisations as responsible companies with an impact on society.”

The chair and chief executive of Ofcom were giving evidence to the Commons culture, media and sport select committee on Tuesday as part of a review of the regulator’s work.

Richards declined to comment specifically on Hennigan’s remarks but said: “At one level what he is saying is clearly right in the sense that social media are being used by all sorts of different communities, clearly including terrorist and jihadi [groups], and are part of the way that groups like that communicate.”

The pair were responding to a question from committee member and Labour MP Jim Sheridan about the unregulated nature of companies such as Google and Facebook who largely fall outside of Ofcom’s remit.

Sheridan said the companies’ representatives, when they had appeared before the committee, “don’t take their social responsibilities all that seriously”.

Richards said there were “at least three issues – one is the security issue which the new director of GCHQ touched upon, there are content and citizen protection issues, things like pornography and bullying, and then there is a wholly different set of economic issues as well which we do tend to get involved in, things like net neutrality.

“The area where it is most difficult and people are exploring, and for sure we are involved in discussions from time to time, is that area of what goes over these networks and to what extent we are as a society comfortable with the world that [it] is creating, in particular in relation to children.”

Hodgson said: “There are obviously arrangements whereby the government can categorise material [relating to terrorism or illegal pornography] and issue take-down notices.”

But she said there were “very great difficulties where that material is on the cusp, that doesn’t fall very clearly under those arrangements”.

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