Hello and Western Westminster's war on the web, Tori fighting over Boris and Brexit and the

Serena Williams sexism saga.

There are people with very malign agendas who are setting up these groups knowingly. If you go along with the grain of the group and you incite violence or you have racist views, you get loads and loads of likes.

It's a little bit personal, but it's mainly just what I've seen

develop. They're normalizing extremism, they're normalizing hate and we as MPs we are on the

receiving end of that.

Labour MP Lucy Powell has proposed a bill to regulate Facebook groups and online forums.

Powell claims that secret groups are being used to spread hate and disinformation online.

The bill would not only hold up group moderators responsible for the content posted by its members,

but it would also force social media platforms to reveal the names of secret groups above a certain size.

The bill has cross-party support.

Ella, what do you make of the plans?

Not very much. I mean I I think whatever anyone says, this is definitely another battle in the war on free speech

online.

I mean, Lucy Powell's dressing this up as everyone does in terms of it making the internet a nice place, of making

social media what it's supposed to be, which is a kind of friendly environment where everyone exchanges pleasantries but

actually what this is is just another step in an attack on internet freedom so we've

got the Data Protection Act Internet Safety Strategy Strategy, the Digital Charter, and now this proposed

bill, I mean, along with hate speech laws or whatever else you want to say, it's becoming

increasingly obvious that politicians do not want us to be able to have free speech online.

This is what this is about.

It's about saying that there are certain things you cannot say online and as anyone who

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