Counter-extremism workers at Prevent, the government-led, multi-agency programme, have warned of a rapid rise in the number of cases being referred to them by schools concerned about the influence of the self-styled misogynist influencer Andrew Tate. Incidents include the verbal harassment of female teachers or other pupils and outbursts echoing Tate’s views, which are disseminated and spread mainly on social platforms such as TikTok and Instagram despite him being banned from them.

Tate is a former kickboxer who rose to fame in 2016 when he was removed from TV show Big Brother over a video which appeared to depict him attacking a woman.  At the time of his removal from the Big Brother house, Tate said the controversial video had been edited, calling it "a total lie trying to make me look bad". He went on to gain notoriety online, with Twitter banning him for saying women should "bear responsibility" for being sexually assaulted.  He was arrested in Romania in December 2022 on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and forming an organised crime group to exploit women. He denies wrongdoing.

Controversial measures which would have forced big technology platforms to take down “legal but harmful” material such as Tate’s misogynistic views have recently been removed from the Online Safety Bill that is currently going through Parliament.  When Rishi Sunak was challenged by the Labour MP Alex Davies-Jones in the Commons in January 2023 about how he plans to counter the “radicalisation of young men” online, Rishi Sunak insisted he was proud of what the online safety bill would achieve.  The draft Bill is currently being considered in the House of Lords where it is expected they will seek to toughen up its provisions on online pornography and the promotion of violence against women and girls.

The NSPCC has argued self-regulation of social media and online content platforms had "entirely failed" and called on the UK government to "protect" people.  Hannah Ruschen, senior policy officer at NSPCC has said, "It's very, very difficult for companies to keep on top of snowballing content and we're seeing the videos and images shared in the millions.  Companies are finding it very difficult to keep up with that kind of reactionary approach to content, to removing content after it's been identified as being harmful.  So what we need to see is a proactive approach and understanding what materials could be harmful and making sure that they actually remove that."

Leading child protection expert Dai Davies, a former head of Royal Protection and Met Police divisional commander, has said children should be protected against "this kind of viral aspect of misogyny" and also called for stricter government laws online. "What worries me about Mr Andrew Tate is that he seems now to be able to almost print and say things which I would regard as misogyny and detrimental to the safety of females.  When are we going to realise in this country, politicians and public opinion, unless you stop this kind of attitude, this kind of issue on the web, where young, impressionable men can actually think it's OK to regard women as inferior beings, I don't think he and that kind of misogyny can be tolerated.”

While the final timetable for the bill has yet to be published, if it has not passed by April 2023, according to parliamentary rules the legislation would be dropped entirely, and the process would need to start all over again in a new parliament. After so much time and input to this Bill and with the need for regulation being needed more and more it has to be hoped that that is not the end result. Meanwhile organisations working with children and seeing the consequences of online abuse and inappropriate behaviours continue to have to grapple with the many challenges that arise and which no doubt will be issues in future claims.

The fundamental principle of Nadine Dorries’ original bill was that social

Dorries’ original bill may have had its flaws, but her fundamental instinct was right: social media companies aren’t special. Like any other legal industry, they operate with the consent of wider society and should be held accountable for any damage they do. In decades to come, I suspect we’ll look back on the era of the online free-for-all not with nostalgia but bewilderment that the penny took so long to drop.