Mayor Of London Calls For Online Loss Act Due To Much Monetized Online Harassment

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan often experiences online harassment. (photo: twitter @SadiqKhan)

JAKARTA - London Mayor Sadiq Khan believes the Ministry needs to push through legislative efforts to suppress online hate speech. That opinion was also supported by Angela Rayner, deputy chairman of the UK Labor Party, who also said that harassment and prejudice had been "monetized".

Speaking at a Labor conference event in Liverpool, Khan, said analysis had found 230,000 racist tweets about him sent since he became mayor in 2016, and almost none were deleted.

Rayner, said the stream of harassment prevented some people from running, or in some cases even difficult to give their opinion online.

Both said the government needed to push through the online harm bill, which was delayed from the summer and could be massively redesigned under the government of British Prime Minister Liz Truss.

Rayner told the audience that the abuse he faced was such that he almost never reads comments or tweets online. In fact he generally only does so if his staff finds one that is potentially criminal and he needs to read it to provide a statement on the victim impact to the police.

That online harassment often comes from destructive people. "It acts as a catalyst for people who have experienced trauma themselves and revisit that trauma," Rayner said.

Khan said his office had reported the 100 most offensive tweets about him to Twitter, but only four were deleted.

"With no rules of their own, the government must regulate companies like Facebook and Twitter," he said. “That's why the online Loss Act is so important. The hate has been monetized."

“What Twitter and others have to do is invest in algorithms or staff to remove this as soon as it goes up, and especially after it is reported. If I violate copyright with a song written by someone else, then it will be deleted immediately," he added.

Both politicians condemned some political opponents and sections of the traditional media for spreading dangerous myths in the first place.

Khan noted media coverage of the 2016 mayoral election linking him, as a Muslim, to Islamic terrorism, and that his Conservative opponent, Zac Goldsmith, was trying to scare Londoners of Hindu background.

"What he's doing is he's mainstreaming and normalizing the prejudices that exist against people who share my faith," Khan said. He also added that several news organizations had followed suit.

"What we're realizing now is that when you use my name, it's a great click bait for traffic," he said. “This is the trickle-down tone set by the mainstream media. In fact, there are journalists who say untruthful things about Angela and me, because they know it attracts readers. It's good for business.”