The UK government has told social media companies to take down content showing people driving the wrong way down roads following a fatal crash over the weekend. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.
Two police officers were among seven people killed when a car travelling the wrong way down a dual carriageway crashed into a force vehicle on the A66 near Middlesbrough.
There have been reports that at least one of the young men who died in the collision early on Saturday had been involved in filming dangerous driving in TikTok videos.
Asked about these reports this morning, the defence minister, Luke Pollard, said social media platforms must remove content glorifying dangerous driving or else the government will use powers under the Online Safety Act to compel them to take the videos down. Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live this morning, Pollard said:
"We've communicated to those social media platforms that have been hosting content that celebrates this type of dangerous behaviour on our roads to take down that content."
"I think we all need to give the police time, but there's also things we can be doing in the meantime to make sure that the internet is a safer place for everyone, that doesn't celebrate and load views and therefore financial incentives on people to generate such awful content. I want to see social media companies step up."
"It's one of the reasons they've argued against some of the regulations, saying they can police themselves. Well this is the perfect opportunity to demonstrate it. Remove the content that celebrates dangerous behaviour on our roads."
The issue of lax social media regulation of dangerous driving content came to prominence amid a public outcry in Ireland after five teenagers were killed in a head-on crash involving a car driving in the wrong direction on a motorway in County Kildare last weekend.
The Garda commissioner, Justin Kelly, described the head-on collision between the two cars as "horrific" and said "in some cases" vehicles were being driven on the wrong side of motorways for social media likes. TikTok declined an invitation to appear before an Irish parliamentary committee on media to discuss videos, citing the ongoing police investigation, according to Ireland's national broadcaster, RTÉ.