Facebook may need to be regulated, former head of Government Digital Service says

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Facebook needs to be reformed to tackle the growing popularity of far-right groups, the former head of the Government Digital Service has said.

Mike Bracken said the social network might need to face official regulation and that changes to the way it operates “has to come soon”.

He posted the comments on Twitter, in response to a post about the Britain First Facebook page, which has more than 1.9 million Likes and more than 1.7 million followers.

“Facebook needs reform. Regulatory or otherwise, but it has to come soon,” Bracken tweeted in response to a tweet from BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones.

That tweet read: “Facebook, where its page has 1.9m likes, remains the key social media platform for Britain First. And the company refuses to respond to my repeated requests to explain why it doesn’t contravene its rules.”

Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, the far-right group’s leader and deputy leader respectively, were suspended from Twitter this week, after the site started enforcing its new rules on violence and hateful conduct.

Facebook, meanwhile, says it is “reviewing” Britain First’s page.

Britain First was ”up until recently” a registered political party, Simon Milner, Facebook’s director of public policy, told the Home Affairs Committee this week, ”so they were deemed by the authorities to be legitimate in that respect.”

He added: “However there are clearly issues with their Facebook page. There have been a number of pieces of content taken down. We are obviously reviewing it.”

In October, culture secretary Karen Bradley said the Government was considering reclassifying Facebook and other internet giants as publishers, rather than conduits of information, which would force them to take more responsibility over what appears on their sites.

“We need to be careful here that what we do is not a sledgehammer to crack a nut – a piece of legislation where we say under UK common law these platforms are now publishers, which could impact on freedom of speech, civil liberties and the ability of people to enjoy the benefits that the internet brings,” she said.

“But we have to do this in a way that doesn’t allow harm.”