Lisa Nandy condemns Elon Musk’s X over doxxing crackdown plans

X owner Elon Musk.A cabinet minister has hit out at Elon Musk’s X platform after the company snubbed a summit aimed at tackling doxxing on social media.Culture secretary Lisa Nandy hauled tech bosses in for a meeting on Tuesday following the abuse of RNLI staff online.Any-migrant campaigners have targeted the lifesaving charity for helping asylum seekers trying to cross the English Channel from France.In some instances, the personal details of RNLI workers have been put online – a practice known as doxxing.Appearing on LBC this morning, Nandy said: “I’m really, really very angry about the treatment of RNLI charity volunteers and staff who’ve been attacked online.“They’ve had their names and their photographs published for doing the life-saving work that they’re doing. We’ve also seen this happening to lots of other people as well.”She said police officers and journalists had also had their details made public online and vowed to crack down on the problem.“I was astonished when I took on responsibility for this a few weeks ago to find that publishing people’s addresses online is not automatically a criminal offence and isn’t automatically taken down by the social media companies,” she said. On yesterday’s summit with social media firms, Nandy said: “X didn’t even bother to turn up, which I think tells you everything about their disgraceful attitude to their own moral and social obligations. And the government is determined to act.“We’re going to tighten up the law. So if you think that it’s acceptable to go around harassing people online, publishing their addresses and other personal attributes, you’ve got another think coming because the government is going to act.”Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.

Culture secretary says X ‘didn’t even bother to turn up’ to meeting about abuse, intimidation and doxxing on social mediaGood morning. We will be hearing from Andy Burnham today because he is back at work having taken time off following the death of his father. And already we have heard from Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, who has been doing a media round.She has condemned Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, describing it as an “absolute disgrace”.I had the social media companies in to see me yesterday to talk to them about their responsibilities in this regard. All of the different social media companies have completely different terms of service, different standards that they apply to online hatred directed at individuals.Some of them will automatically remove that content. Some of them, frankly, won’t.I have made a commitment to the RNLI and to, not just charities but public sector workers, police officers, and others who are being routinely harassed and abused online in the course of work, that we will tighten up the law. We will make sure that where, for example, people’s addresses are being published online, that we just do not allow that to happen, that those things will have to be either blocked or taken down immediately.We cannot have a situation where not just charity volunteers, but shop workers and social workers and police officers are being routinely harassed online in the course of their work. Continue reading...