Starmer Government Updates UK Priorities for Online Safety in 2025

Report from TechCrunch

In Brief – The UK Government’s Minister for Science, Innovation and Technology has released a draft of his strategic priorities to create a safer online environment, including recommendations regarding the implementation of the Online Safety Act (OSA) that is scheduled to come fully online in the spring. Minister Peter Kyle’s “key themes” include safety by design, platform transparency and accountability, and agile regulation, and continues the priority focus on keeping children safe online. Platform providers are expected to “take proactive steps to reduce the risks their services are used to carry out” including terrorism, child sexual abuse and exploitation, illegal suicide and self-harm content, illegal disinformation, hate that incites violence towards specific individuals or groups, UK-linked content designed to encourage or facilitate organized immigration crime by criminal groups, illegal foreign interference such as state-sponsored disinformation, fraud, and "other priority offences." The new priorities will be sent to lawmakers for approval, and the government expects them to be in place next spring. In the meantime, Ofcom, the regulator enforcing the legislation, is set to publish the first edition of illegal harms codes and guidance under the act next month, and platforms will have three months to complete their illegal harms risk assessments.

Context – In mid-October, PM Starmer set out AI and digital technology investment and innovation as economic development priorities and said that regulators would champion deregulation. At the same time, some critics claim that regulation like the OSA is already “not fit for purpose” and during summer riots spurred by anger towards minorities, which many said were inflamed by social media commentary, government leaders threatened to open it back up and expend it. Also, with the Australian Government proposing legislation to ban those under age 16 from using social media, there are calls to consider an age limit in the UK and Kyle said he would not rule it out although that was later "clarified" as an age limit not being planned. More of the schizophrenic-seeming UK tech policy.

Google Tests Impact of Removing News from Searches in Europe

Report from The Verge

In Brief – Google has announced that it is testing a modified version of Google search on a small share of users in Europe that does not deliver links to news media stories from European-based media companies. The search giant will remove news articles from search results, Google News, and Discover for one percent of users in Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain. They say the “time-limited” test is being done because EU regulators and publishers “have asked for additional data about the effect of news content in Search.” The company says it will continue to show results from websites and news publishers located outside the EU during the test.

Context – When Google discusses dropping news links from search results, speculation runs to the ongoing battles with media companies over government mandates to force Google and Meta to pay them when their news content appears on the digital giants’ platforms. In recent years, Google has threatened to drop local media from search results in Australia, Canada, and California, but in each case, Google ended up agreeing to some manner of bulk payments to big local media companies to forestall government-set mandatory payments. The biggest news on the issue is how Meta has changed their stance. After agreeing set up a major media payments regime in Australia in 2021, Meta has decisively changed course and has said that they will prohibit users, including media companies, from posting news links in jurisdictions that require Meta to pay for those links. They implemented this policy in Canada in 2023 and threaten to do so in California. When push comes to shove, Google pays, and Meta tries not to. The situation in the EU is a bit different as license payments are engineered through copyright “neighboring rights” enforced by aggressive antitrust agencies arguing that not complying is an abuse of a dominant position. But again, Google has been paying more and Meta is taking a harder line, most recently in Poland. Lastly, media companies are trying to engineer payments from more very large platforms, including Apple, TikTok and X.

Meta Ordered to Not Share WhatsApp Data with Its Other Services in India

Report from Mint

In Brief – The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has ruled that WhatsApp and its parent company Meta violated the 2002 Competition Act by “abusing its dominant position” when the messaging app’s privacy policy was changed in 2021 to require users to accept that their data could be shared with other companies and services within Meta. The messaging app is the most popular in the India with over 500 million users. The company has been fined 2.13 billion rupees ($25.25 million) and WhatsApp has been directed to stop sharing data collected on its platform with any of the other Meta companies for advertising purposes for a period of five years. For purposes other than advertising, the CCI says that WhatsApp’s policy should include a detailed explanation of the user data shared with other Meta group companies or products specifying the purpose, and that only data sharing for the purpose of providing the WhatsApp services itself should be required of a user. A WhatsApp spokesperson said that user privacy remains the company’s highest priority, that the 2021 policy change did not change the privacy of people’s personal messages, and that users who did not accept the update continued to be able to use WhatsApp without having their accounts deleted or losing functionality. The company has said it would appeal the order.

Context – The CCI’s application of antitrust law to block data sharing between WhatsApp and other Meta services is similar to the successful effort of the German Federal Cartel Office (FCO) to police Meta data policies and prohibit combining the data of individual users across its different services without their freely given consent. The German antitrust regulator first objected Facebook’s data policies in 2019, arguing that its data policies abused the company’s dominant position. The agency announced last month that Meta has dropped its appeal of the order and agreed to a set of policies that FCO President Andreas Mundt says, “means that users now have much greater control over how their data are combined.” While the company did not say the new policies will be used in other markets, it seems they might eventually in India.

UK Antitrust Regulators Clear Google’s Investment in AI Company Anthropic

Report from Bloomberg

In Brief – The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has concluded its Phase 1 review of Google’s $2 billion investment in AI company Anthropic, creator of the chatbot “Claude”, by clearing the transaction because it believes that Google will not have material influence over the AI startup. The British antitrust regulator pursued a similar course of action in reviewing the competition implications of Amazon’s $4 billion investment in Anthropic, likewise deciding that the digital giant’s investment did not qualify for further review due to lack of material influence. The CMA also opened a Phase 1 review of Microsoft’s major investments in chatbot leader OpenAI in late 2023, and but unlike their reviews of the Amazon and Google investments in Anthropic, they have not formally closed that matter. However, the CMA did determine that Microsoft’s move to hire key personnel away from AI startup InflectionAI and establish a business relationship with the company afterwards was appropriately considered a merger, but then cleared the transaction as not threatening competition.

Context – In recent years, competition regulators in the US, EU and UK have been aligned that vigorous antitrust scrutiny is key to creating healthy competition in emerging AI-related markets. In July, they signed a joint statement committing to “work to ensure effective competition and the fair and honest treatment of consumers and businesses". This followed each agency opening an investigation of Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI as well as looking at other deals between digital giants and AI startups. However, in the UK, Prime Minister Starmer has since spoken out at a major London investment conference saying that the country “needs to run toward” AI opportunities and that its regulators would champion deregulation and investment. And in the US, with the election of Donald Trump as President, there is widespread expectation that AI development will be promoted and regulation restrained, while federal merger reviews will be less aggressive.