Tech firms ignored invite to authorities assembly about on-line behaviour, says Matt Hancock
The tradition secretary has agreed he doesn't have sufficient energy to police social media firms after admitting solely 4 of 14 invited to talks confirmed up.
Matt Hancock advised the BBC it had given him "a big impetus" to introduce new laws to deal with what he has referred to as the internet's "Wild West" tradition.
He admitted self-policing had not labored and laws was wanted.
But he didn't reply questions on what it could take for firms to be hit with big fines.
He advised BBC One's Andrew Marr present, offered by Emma Barnett, that the federal government "just don't know" what number of youngsters of the hundreds of thousands utilizing utilizing social media weren't sufficiently old for an account and he was "very worried" about age verification.
Asked what the edge can be for firms to be hit with fines, when it comes to underage youngsters on sure platforms, he mentioned: "I'm not going to give a figure because we are going to consult on it."
He advised the programme he "hopes we get to a position" the place all customers of social media customers has to have their age verified.
Code of conducts can be examined he mentioned as current "terms of reference" have been typically not enforced correctly. Asked how lots of the 14 firms invited to attend authorities talks had confirmed up, he replied: "Four."
He mentioned: "One of the issues we have now received is that we interact with Facebook, Google and Twitter and so they get the entire press, they get the entire complaints within the public debate however there's now truly a far better variety of social media platforms like musical.ly.
"They didn't show up and the companies, they have now got over a million on their site."
He stated that this, and the difficulties getting Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to reply MPs' questions confirmed Britain didn't have the ability wanted: "That's one of many causes we're legislating.
"The fact that only four companies turned up when I invited the 14 biggest in gave me a big impetus to drive this proposal to legislate through."
Pushed for particulars of how rapidly social media firms must take away terrorist content material to keep away from a tremendous, he mentioned: "We should be very ambitious," however mentioned a set timescale might imply firms "work up to that timescale", whereas he would favor them to take action "as quickly as possible".
Two authorities departments are engaged on a White Paper anticipated to be introduced ahead later this yr.